The Project Gutenberg eBook of Social organization
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: Social organization
A study of the larger mind
Author: Charles Horton Cooley
Release date: January 5, 2024 [eBook #72636]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: Charles Scribner's sons, 1909
Credits: Bob Taylor, Aaron Adrignola and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOCIAL ORGANIZATION ***
Transcriber’s Note
Italic text displayed as: _italic_
Bold text displayed as: =bold=
SOCIAL ORGANIZATION
BOOKS BY CHARLES HORTON COOLEY
PUBLISHED BY CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
=Social Organization; a Study of the Larger Mind= _net_, $1.50
=Human Nature and the Social Order= _net_, $1.50
SOCIAL ORGANIZATION
A STUDY OF THE LARGER MIND
BY
CHARLES HORTON COOLEY
PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
AUTHOR OF “HUMAN NATURE AND THE SOCIAL ORDER”
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1911
COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
Published April, 1909
[Illustration: Decoration]
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED
To E. J. C.
WHOSE INFLUENCE IS A CHIEF
SOURCE OF ANY LITERARY
MERIT IT MAY HAVE
PREFACE
Our life is all one human whole, and if we are to have any real
knowledge of it we must see it as such. If we cut it up it dies in
the process: and so I conceive that the various branches of research
that deal with this whole are properly distinguished by change in
the point of sight rather than by any division in the thing that is
seen. Accordingly, in a former book (Human Nature and Social Order), I
tried to see society as it exists in the social nature of man and to
display that in its main outlines. In this one the eye is focussed on
the enlargement and diversification of intercourse which I have called
Social Organization, the individual, though visible, remaining slightly
in the background.
It will be seen from my title and all my treatment that I apprehend
the subject on the mental rather than the material side. I by no
means, however, overlook or wish to depreciate the latter, to which
I am willing to ascribe all the importance that any one can require
for it. Our task as students of society is a large one, and each of
us, I suppose, may undertake any part of it to which he feels at all
competent.
ANN ARBOR, MICH., _February, 1909_.
CONTENTS
PART I—PRIMARY ASPECTS OF ORGANIZATION
CHAPTER I
SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL ASPECTS OF MIND
PAGE
Mind an Organic Whole—Conscious and Unconscious Relations—Does
Self-Consciousness Come First? _Cogito, Ergo Sum_—The
Larger Introspection—Self-Consciousness in Children—Public
Consciousness 3
CHAPTER II
SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL ASPECTS OF MIND—(CONTINUED)
Moral Aspect of the Organic View—It Implies that Reform
Should Be Based on Sympathy—Uses of Praise and Blame—Responsibility
Broadened but Not Lost—Moral Value of
a Larger View—Organic Morality Calls for Knowledge—Nature
of Social Organization 13
CHAPTER III
PRIMARY GROUPS
Meaning of Primary Groups—Family, Playground, and Neighborhood—How
Far Influenced by Larger Society—Meaning
and Permanence of “Human Nature”—Primary Groups the
Nursery of Human Nature 23
CHAPTER IV
PRIMARY IDEALS
Nature of Primary Idealism—The Ideal of a “We” or Moral
Unity—It Does Not Exclude Self-Assertion—Ideals Springing
from Hostility—Loyalty, Truth, Service—Kindness—Lawfulness—Freedom—
The Doctrine of Natural Right—Bearing
of Primary Idealism upon Education and Philanthropy 32
CHAPTER V
THE EXTENSION OF PRIMARY IDEALS
Primary Ideals Underlie Democracy and Christianity—Why
They Are Not Achieved on a Larger Scale—What They Require
from Personality—From Social Mechanism—The
Principle of Compensation 51
PART II—COMMUNICATION
CHAPTER VI
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF COMMUNICATION
Meaning of Communication—Its Relation to Human Nature—To
Society at Large 61
CHAPTER VII
THE GROWTH OF COMMUNICATION
Pre-Verbal Communication—The Rise of Speech—Its Mental
and Social Function—The Function of Writing—Printing
and the Modern World—The Non-Verbal Arts 66
CHAPTER VIII
MODERN COMMUNICATION: ENLARGEMENT AND ANIMATION
Character of Recent Changes—Their General Effect—The
Change in the United States—Organized Gossip—Public
Opinion, Democracy, Internationalism—The Value of
Diffusion—Enlargement of Feeling—Conclusion 80
CHAPTER IX
MODERN COMMUNICATION: INDIVIDUALITY
The Question—Why Communication Should Foster Individuality—The
Contrary or Dead-Level Theory—Reconciliation
of These Views—The Outlook as Regards Individuality 91
CHAPTER X
MODERN COMMUNICATION: SUPERFICIALITY AND STRAIN
Stimulating Effect of Modern Life—Superficiality—Strain—Pathological
Effects 98
PART III—THE DEMOCRATIC MIND
CHAPTER XI
THE ENLARGEMENT OF CONSCIOUSNESS
Narrowness of Consciousness in Tribal Society—Importance of
Face-to-Face Assembly—Individuality—Subconscious Character
of Wider Relations—Enlargement of Consciousness—Irregularity
in Growth—Breadth of Modern Consciousness—Democracy 107
CHAPTER XII
THE THEORY OF PUBLIC OPINION
Public Opinion as Organization—Agreement Not Essential—Public
Opinion versus Popular Impression—Public Thought
Not an Average—A Group Is Capable of Expression through
Its Most Competent Members—General and Special Public
Opinion—The Sphere of the Former—Of the Latter—The
Two Are United in Personality—How Public Opinion Rules—Effective
Rule Based on Moral Unity 121
CHAPTER XIII
WHAT THE MASSES CONTRIBUTE
The Masses the Initiators of Sentiment—They Live in the Central
Current of Experience—Distinction or Privilege Apt to
Cause Isolation—Institutional Character of Upper Classes—The
Masses Shrewd Judges of Persons—This the Main
Ground for Expecting that the People Will Be Right in the
Long Run—Democracy Always Representative—Conclusion 135
CHAPTER XIV
DEMOCRACY AND CROWD EXCITEMENT
The Crowd-Theory of Modern Life—The Psychology of Crowds—Modern
Conditions Favor Psychological Contagion—Democracy
a Training in Self-Control—The Crowd Not Always
in the Wrong—Conclusion; the Case of France 149
CHAPTER XV
DEMOCRACY AND DISTINCTION
The Problem—Democracy Should Be Distinguished from
Transition—The Dead-Level Theory of Democracy—Confusion
and Its Effects—“Individualism” May Not Be Favorable
to Distinguished Individuality—Contemporary Uniformity—Relative
Advantages of America and Europe—Haste,
Superficiality, Strain—Spiritual Economy of a Settled
Order—Commercialism—Zeal for Diffusion—Conclusion 157
CHAPTER XVI
THE TREND OF SENTIMENT
Meaning and General Trend of Sentiment—Attenuation—Refinement—Sense
of Justice—Truth as Justice—As Realism
As Expediency—As Economy of Attention—Hopefulness 177
CHAPTER XVII
THE TREND OF SENTIMENT—(CONTINUED)
Nature of the Sentiment of Brotherhood—Favored by Communication
and Settled Principles—How Far Contemporary
Life Fosters It—How Far Uncongenial to It—General Outcome
in this Regard—The Spirit of Service—The Trend of
Manners—Brotherhood in Relation to Conflict—Blame—Democracy
and Christianity 189
PART IV—SOCIAL CLASSES
CHAPTER XVIII
THE HEREDITARY OR CASTE PRINCIPLE
Nature and Use of Classes—Inheritance and Competition the
Two Principles upon which Classes Are Based—Conditions
in Human Nature Making for Hereditary Classes—Caste
Spirit 209
CHAPTER XIX
CONDITIONS FAVORING OR OPPOSING THE GROWTH OF CASTE
Three Conditions Affecting the Increase or Diminution of Caste—
Race-Caste—Immigration and Conquest—Gradual Differentiation
of Functions; Mediæval Caste; India—Influence
of Settled Conditions—Influence of the State of
Communication and Enlightenment—Conclusion 217
CHAPTER XX
THE OUTLOOK REGARDING CASTE
The Question—How Far the Inheritance Principle Actually
Prevails—Influences Favoring Its Growth—Those Antagonizing
It—The Principles of Inheritance and Equal Opportunity
as Affecting Social Efficiency—Conclusion 229
CHAPTER XXI
OPEN CLASSES
The Nature of Open Classes—Whether Class-Consciousness Is
Desirable—Fellowship and Coöperation Deficient in Our
Society—Class Organization in Relation to Freedom 239
CHAPTER XXII
HOW FAR WEALTH IS THE BASIS OF OPEN CLASSES
Impersonal Character of Open Classes—Various Classifications—Classes,
as Commonly Understood, Based on Obvious Distinctions—Wealth
as Generalized Power—Economic Betterment
as an Ideal of the Ill-Paid Classes—Conclusion 248
CHAPTER XXIII
ON THE ASCENDENCY OF A CAPITALIST CLASS
The Capitalist Class—Its Lack of Caste Sentiment—In What
Sense “the Fittest”—Moral Traits—How Far Based on Service—Autocratic
and Democratic Principles in the Control
of Industry—Reasons for Expecting an Increase of the
Democratic Principle—Social Power in General—Organizing
Capacity—Nature and Sources of Capitalist Power—Power
over the Press and over Public Sentiment—Upper Class
Atmosphere 256
CHAPTER XXIV
ON THE ASCENDENCY OF A CAPITALIST CLASS—(CONTINUED)
The Influence of Ambitious Young Men—Security of the Dominant
Class in an Open System—Is There Danger of Anarchy
and Spoliation?—Whether the Sway of Riches Is Greater
Now than Formerly—Whether Greater in America than in
England 273
CHAPTER XXV
THE ORGANIZATION OF THE ILL-PAID CLASSES
The Need of Class Organization—Uses and Dangers of Unions—General
Disposition of the Hand-Working Classes 284
CHAPTER XXVI
POVERTY
The Meaning of Poverty—Personal and General Causes—Poverty
in a Prosperous Society Due Chiefly to Maladjustment—Are
the Poor the “Unfit”?—Who Is to Blame for Poverty?—Attitude
of Society toward the Poor—Fundamental
Remedies 290
CHAPTER XXVII
HOSTILE FEELING BETWEEN CLASSES
Conditions Producing Class Animosity—The Spirit of Service
Allays Bitterness—Possible Decrease of the Prestige of
Wealth—Probability of a More Communal Spirit in the
Use of Wealth—Influence of Settled Rules for Social
Opposition—Importance of Face-to-Face Discussion 301
PART V—INSTITUTIONS
CHAPTER XXVIII
INSTITUTIONS AND THE INDIVIDUAL
The Nature of Institutions—Hereditary and Social Factors—The
Child and the World—Society and Personality—Personality
versus the Institution—The Institution as a Basis of
Personality—The Moral Aspect—Choice _versus_ Mechanism—Personality
the Life of Institutions—Institutions Becoming
Freer in Structure 313
CHAPTER XXIX
INSTITUTIONS AND THE INDIVIDUAL—(CONTINUED)
Innovation as a Personal Tendency—Innovation and Conservatism
as Public Habit—Solidarity—French and Anglo-Saxon
Solidarity—Tradition and Convention—Not so Opposite as
They Appear—Real Difference, in this Regard, between
Modern and Mediæval Society—Traditionalism and Conventionalism
in Modern Life 327
CHAPTER XXX
FORMALISM AND DISORGANIZATION
The Nature of Formalism—Its Effect upon Personality—Formalism
in Modern Life—Disorganization, “Individualism”—How
it Affects the Individual—Relation to Formalism—“Individualism”
Implies Defective Sympathy—Contemporary
“Individualism”—Restlessness under Discomfort—The
Better Aspect of Disorganization 342
CHAPTER XXXI
DISORGANIZATION: THE FAMILY
Old and New Régimes in the Family—The Declining Birth-Rate—“Spoiled”
Children—The Opening of New Careers to
Women—European and American Points of View—Personal
Factors in Divorce—Institutional Factors—Conclusion 356
CHAPTER XXXII
DISORGANIZATION: THE CHURCH
The Psychological View of Religion—The Need of Social
Structure—Creeds—Why Symbols Tend to Become Formal—Traits
of a Good System of Symbols—Contemporary
Need of Religion—Newer Tendencies in the Church 372
CHAPTER XXXIII
DISORGANIZATION: OTHER TRADITIONS
Disorder in the Economic System—In Education—In Higher
Culture—In the Fine Arts 383
PART VI—PUBLIC WILL
CHAPTER XXXIV
THE FUNCTION OF PUBLIC WILL
Public and Private Will—The Lack of Public Will—Social
Wrongs Commonly Not Willed at All 395
CHAPTER XXXV
GOVERNMENT AS PUBLIC WILL
Government Not the Only Agent of Public Will—The Relative
Point of View; Advantages of Government as an Agent—Mechanical
Tendency of Government—Characteristics Favorable
to Government Activity—Municipal Socialism—Self-Expression
the Fundamental Demand of the People—Actual
Extension of State Functions 402
CHAPTER XXXVI
SOME PHASES OF THE LARGER WILL
Growing Efficiency of the Intellectual Processes—Organic
Idealism—The Larger Morality—Indirect Service—Increasing
Simplicity and Flexibility in Social Structure—Public
Will Saves Part of the Cost of Change—Human Nature the
Guiding Force behind Public Will 411
Index 421
_PART I_
PRIMARY ASPECTS OF ORGANIZATION
SOCIAL ORGANIZATION
CHAPTER I
SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL ASPECTS OF MIND
MIND AN ORGANIC WHOLE—CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS RELATIONS—DOES
SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS COME FIRST? COGITO, ERGO SUM—THE LARGER
INTROSPECTION—SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS IN CHILDREN—PUBLIC CONSCIOUSNESS.
Mind is an organic whole made up of coöperating individualities, in
somewhat the same way that the music of an orchestra is made up of
divergent but related sounds. No one would think it necessary or
reasonable to divide the music into two kinds, that made by the whole
and that of particular instruments, and no more are there two kinds of
mind, the social mind and the individual mind. When we study the social
mind we merely fix our attention on larger aspects and relations rather
than on the narrower ones of ordinary psychology.
The view that all mind acts together in a vital whole from which the
individual is never really separate flows naturally from our growing
knowledge of heredity and suggestion, which makes it increasingly clear
that every thought we have is linked with the thought of our ancestors
and associates, and through them with that of society at large. It is
also the only view consistent with the general standpoint of modern
science, which admits nothing isolate in nature.
The unity of the social mind consists not in agreement but in
organization, in the fact of reciprocal influence or causation among
its parts, by virtue of which everything that takes place in it is
connected with everything else, and so is an outcome of the whole.
Whether, like the orchestra, it gives forth harmony may be a matter of
dispute, but that its sound, pleasing or otherwise, is the expression
of a vital coöperation, cannot well be denied. Certainly everything
that I say or think is influenced by what others have said or thought,
and, in one way or another, sends out an influence of its own in turn.
This differentiated unity of mental or social life, present in the
simplest intercourse but capable of infinite growth and adaptation, is
what I mean in this work by social organization. It would be useless, I
think, to attempt a more elaborate definition. We have only to open our
eyes to _see_ organization; and if we cannot do that no definition will
help us.
In the social mind we may distinguish—very roughly of course—conscious
and unconscious relations, the unconscious being those of which we are
not aware, which for some reason escape our notice. A great part of
the influences at work upon us are of this character: our language,
our mechanical arts, our government and other institutions, we derive
chiefly from people to whom we are but indirectly and unconsciously
related. The larger movements of society—the progress and decadence
of nations, institutions and races—have seldom been a matter of
consciousness until they were past. And although the growth of social
consciousness is perhaps the greatest fact of history, it has still but
a narrow and fallible grasp of human life.
Social consciousness, or awareness of society, is inseparable from
self-consciousness, because we can hardly think of ourselves excepting
with reference to a social group of some sort, or of the group except
with reference to ourselves. The two things go together, and what we
are really aware of is a more or less complex personal or social whole,
of which now the particular, now the general, aspect is emphasized.
In general, then, most of our reflective consciousness, of our
wide-awake state of mind, is social consciousness, because a sense of
our relation to other persons, or of other persons to one another, can
hardly fail to be a part of it. Self and society are twin-born, we know
one as immediately as we know the other, and the notion of a separate
and independent ego is an illusion.
This view, which seems to me quite simple and in accord with
common-sense, is not the one most commonly held, for psychologists
and even sociologists are still much infected with the idea that
self-consciousness is in some way primary, and antecedent to social
consciousness, which must be derived by some recondite process of
combination or elimination. I venture, therefore, to give some further
exposition of it, based in part on first-hand observation of the growth
of social ideas in children.
Descartes is, I suppose, the best-known exponent of the traditional
view regarding the primacy of self-consciousness. Seeking an
unquestionable basis for philosophy, he thought that he found it in the
proposition “I think, therefore I am” (_cogito, ergo sum_). This seemed
to him inevitable, though all else might be illusion. “I observed,” he
says, “that, whilst I thus wished to think that all was false, it was
absolutely necessary that I, who thus thought, should be somewhat; and
as I observed that this truth, _I think, hence I am_, was so certain
and of such evidence that no ground of doubt, however extravagant,
could be alleged by the sceptics capable of shaking it, I concluded
that I might, without scruple, accept it as the first principle of the
philosophy of which I was in search.”[1]
From our point of view this reasoning is unsatisfactory in two
essential respects. In the first place it seems to imply that
“I”-consciousness is a part of all consciousness, when, in fact, it
belongs only to a rather advanced stage of development. In the second
it is one-sided or “individualistic” in asserting the personal or “I”
aspect to the exclusion of the social or “we” aspect, which is equally
original with it.
Introspection is essential to psychological or social insight, but the
introspection of Descartes was, in this instance, a limited, almost
abnormal, sort of introspection—that of a self-absorbed philosopher
doing his best to isolate himself from other people and from all simple
and natural conditions of life. The mind into which he looked was in
a highly technical state, not likely to give him a just view of human
consciousness in general.
Introspection is of a larger sort in our day. There is a world of
things in the mind worth looking at, and the modern psychologist,
instead of fixing his attention wholly on an extreme form of
speculative self-consciousness, puts his mind through an infinite
variety of experiences, intellectual and emotional, simple and complex,
normal and abnormal, sociable and private, recording in each case
what he sees in it. He does this by subjecting it to suggestions or
incitements of various kinds, which awaken the activities he desires to
study.
In particular he does it largely by what may be called _sympathetic
introspection_, putting himself into intimate contact with various
sorts of persons and allowing them to awake in himself a life similar
to their own, which he afterwards, to the best of his ability, recalls
and describes. In this way he is more or less able to understand—always
by introspection—children, idiots, criminals, rich and poor,
conservative and radical—any phase of human nature not wholly alien to
his own.
This I conceive to be the principal method of the social psychologist.
One thing which this broader introspection reveals is that the
“I”-consciousness does not explicitly appear until the child is,
say, about two years old, and that when it does appear it comes in
inseparable conjunction with the consciousness of other persons and of
those relations which make up a social group. It is in fact simply one
phase of a body of personal thought which is self-consciousness in one
aspect and social consciousness in another.
The mental experience of a new-born child is probably a mere stream
of impressions, which may be regarded as being individual, in being
differentiated from any other stream, or as social, in being an
undoubted product of inheritance and suggestion from human life at
large; but is not aware either of itself or of society.
Very soon, however, the mind begins to discriminate personal
impressions and to become both naïvely self-conscious and naïvely
conscious of society; that is, the child is aware, in an unreflective
way, of a group and of his own special relation to it. He does not
say “I” nor does he name his mother, his sister or his nurse, but he
has images and feelings out of which these ideas will grow. Later
comes the more reflective consciousness which names both himself and
other people, and brings a fuller perception of the relations which
constitute the unity of this small world.[2]
And so on to the most elaborate phases of self-consciousness and
social consciousness, to the metaphysician pondering the Ego, or the
sociologist meditating on the Social Organism. Self and society go
together, as phases of a common whole. I am aware of the social groups
in which I live as immediately and authentically as I am aware of
myself; and Descartes might have said “We think,” _cogitamus_, on as
good grounds as he said _cogito_.
But, it may be said, this very consciousness that you are considering
is after all located in a particular person, and so are all similar
consciousnesses, so that what we see, if we take an objective view of
the matter, is merely an aggregate of individuals, however social those
individuals may be. Common-sense, most people think, assures us that
the separate person is the primary fact of life.
If so, is it not because common-sense has been trained by custom to
look at one aspect of things and not another? Common-sense, moderately
informed, assures us that the individual has his being only as part
of a whole. What does not come by heredity comes by communication and
intercourse; and the more closely we look the more apparent it is that
separateness is an illusion of the eye and community the inner truth.
“Social organism,” using the term in no abstruse sense but merely to
mean a vital unity in human life, is a fact as obvious to enlightened
common-sense as individuality.
I do not question that the individual is a differentiated centre
of psychical life, having a world of his own into which no other
individual can fully enter; living in a stream of thought in which
there is nothing quite like that in any other stream, neither his
“I,” nor his “you,” nor his “we,” nor even any material object; all,
probably, as they exist for him, have something unique about them. But
this uniqueness is no more apparent and verifiable than the fact—not
at all inconsistent with it—that he is in the fullest sense member of
a whole, appearing such not only to scientific observation but also to
his own untrained consciousness.
There is then no mystery about social consciousness. The view that
there is something recondite about it and that it must be dug for with
metaphysics and drawn forth from the depths of speculation, springs
from a failure to grasp adequately the social nature of all higher
consciousness. What we need in this connection is only a better seeing
and understanding of rather ordinary and familiar facts.
We may view social consciousness either in a particular mind or as a
coöperative activity of many minds. The social ideas that I have are
closely connected with those that other people have, and act and react
upon them to form a whole. This gives us public consciousness, or to
use a more familiar term, public opinion, in the broad sense of a group
state of mind which is more or less distinctly aware of itself. By this
last phrase I mean such a mutual understanding of one another’s points
of view on the part of the individuals or groups concerned as naturally
results from discussion. There are all degrees of this awareness in the
various individuals. Generally speaking, it never embraces the whole in
all its complexity, but almost always some of the relations that enter
into the whole. The more intimate the communication of a group the more
complete, the more thoroughly knit together into a living whole, is its
public consciousness.
In a congenial family life, for example, there may be a public
consciousness which brings all the important thoughts and feelings of
the members into such a living and coöperative whole. In the mind of
each member, also, this same thing exists as a social consciousness
embracing a vivid sense of the personal traits and modes of thought and
feeling of the other members. And, finally, quite inseparable from all
this, is each one’s consciousness of himself, which is largely a direct
reflection of the ideas about himself he attributes to the others, and
is directly or indirectly altogether a product of social life. Thus all
consciousness hangs together, and the distinctions are chiefly based on
point of view.
The unity of public opinion, like all vital unity, is one not of
agreement but of organization, of interaction and mutual influence.
It is true that a certain underlying likeness of nature is necessary
in order that minds may influence one another and so coöperate in
forming a vital whole, but identity, even in the simplest process, is
unnecessary and probably impossible. The consciousness of the American
House of Representatives, for example, is by no means limited to the
common views, if there are any, shared by its members, but embraces
the whole consciousness of every member so far as this deals with the
activity of the House. It would be a poor conception of the whole which
left out the opposition, or even one dissentient individual. That all
minds are different is a condition, not an obstacle, to the unity that
consists in a differentiated and coöperative life.
Here is another illustration of what is meant by individual and
collective aspects of social consciousness. Some of us possess a good
many books relating to social questions of the day. Each of these
books, considered by itself, is the expression of a particular social
consciousness; the author has cleared up his ideas as well as he
can and printed them. But a library of such books expresses social
consciousness in a larger sense; it speaks for the epoch. And certainly
no one who reads the books will doubt that they form a whole, whatever
their differences. The radical and the reactionist are clearly part of
the same general situation.
There are, then, at least three aspects of consciousness which we may
usefully distinguish: self-consciousness, or what I think of myself;
social consciousness (in its individual aspect), or what I think of
other people; and public consciousness, or a collective view of the
foregoing as organized in a communicating group. And all three are
phases of a single whole.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Discourse on Method, part iv.
[2] There is much interest and significance in the matter of children’s
first learning the use of “I” and other self-words—just how they learn
them and what they mean by them. Some discussion of the matter, based
on observation of two children, will be found in Human Nature and
the Social Order; and more recently I have published a paper in the
Psychological Review (November, 1908) called A Study of the Early Use
of Self-Words by a Child. “I” seems to mean primarily the assertion
of will in a social medium of which the child is conscious and of
which his “I” is an inseparable part. It is thus a social idea and,
as stated in the text, arises by differentiation of a vague body of
personal thought which is self-consciousness in one phase and social
consciousness in another. It has no necessary reference to the body.
CHAPTER II
SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL ASPECTS OF MIND—CONTINUED.
MORAL ASPECT OF THE ORGANIC VIEW—IT IMPLIES THAT REFORM SHOULD BE
BASED ON SYMPATHY—USES OF PRAISE AND BLAME—RESPONSIBILITY BROADENED
BUT NOT LOST—MORAL VALUE OF A LARGER VIEW—ORGANIC MORALITY CALLS FOR
KNOWLEDGE—NATURE OF SOCIAL ORGANIZATION.
So far as the moral aspect is concerned, it should be the result of
this organic view of mind to make the whole teaching and practice of
righteousness more rational and effectual by bringing it closer to
fact. A moral view which does not see the individual in living unity
with social wholes is unreal and apt to lead to impractical results.
Have not the moral philosophies of the past missed their mark, in
great part, by setting before the individual absolute standards of
behavior, without affording him an explanation for his backwardness
or a programme for his gradual advance? And did not this spring from
not discerning clearly that the moral life was a social organism, in
which every individual or group of individuals had its own special
possibilities and limitations? In general such systems, pagan and
Christian, have said, “All of us ought to be so and so, but since
very few of us are, this is evidently a bad world.” And they have had
no large, well-organized, slow-but-sure plan for making it better.
Impracticable standards have the same ill effect as unenforcible law;
they accustom us to separate theory from practice and make a chasm
between the individual and the moral ideal.
The present way of thinking tends to close up this chasm and bring both
persons and ideals into more intelligible relations to real life. The
sins or virtues of the individual, it seems, are never fortuitous or
disconnected; they have always a history and collateral support, and
are in fact more or less pleasing phases of a struggling, aspiring
whole. The ideals are also parts of the whole; states of being,
achieved momentarily by those in front and treasured for the animation
and solace of all. And the method of righteousness is to understand
as well as may be the working of this whole and of all its parts, and
to form and pursue practicable ideals based on this understanding. It
is always to be taken for granted that there is no real break with
history and environment. Each individual may be required to put forth a
steadfast endeavor to make himself and his surroundings better, but not
to achieve a standard unconnected with his actual state. And the same
principle applies to special groups of all sorts, including nations,
races, and religions; their progress must be along a natural line of
improvement suggested by what they are. We are thus coming under the
sway of that relative spirit, of which, says Walter Pater, “the ethical
result is a delicate and tender justice in the criticism of human
life.”[3]
According to this, real reform must be sympathetic; that is, it must
begin, not with denunciation—though that may have its uses—but with
an intimate appreciation of things as they are, and should proceed
in a spirit opposite to that in which we have commonly attacked such
questions as the suppression of intemperance and the conversion of the
heathen.
Human nature, it appears, is very much the same in those we reckon
sinners as in ourselves. Good and evil are always intimately bound up
together; no sort of men are chiefly given over to conscious badness;
and to abuse men or groups in the large is unjust and generally
futile. As a rule the practical method is to study closely and kindly
the actual situation, with the people involved in it; then gradually
and carefully to work out the evil from the mixture by substituting
good for it. No matter how mean or hideous a man’s life is, the first
thing is to understand him; to make out just how it is that our common
human nature has come to work out in this way. This method calls for
patience, insight, firmness, and confidence in men, leaving little room
for the denunciatory egotism of a certain kind of reformers. It is
more and more coming to be used in dealing with intemperance, crime,
greed, and in fact all those matters in which we try to make ourselves
and our neighbors better. I notice that the most effectual leaders of
philanthropy have almost ceased from denunciation. Tacitly assuming
that there are excuses for everything, they “shun the negative side”
and spend their energy in building up the affirmative.
This sort of morality does not, however, dispense with praise and
blame, which are based on the necessity of upholding higher ideals by
example, and discrediting lower ones. All such distinctions get their
meaning from their relation to an upward-striving general life, wherein
conspicuous men serve as symbols through which the higher structure
may be either supported or undermined. We must have heroes, and perhaps
villains (though it is better not to think much about the latter),
even though their performances, when closely viewed, appear to be an
equally natural product of history and environment. In short it makes
a difference whether we judge a man with reference to his special
history and “lights,” or to the larger life of the world; and it is
right to assign exemplary praise or blame on the latter ground which
would be unwarranted on the former. There is certainly a special right
for every man; but the right of most men is partial, important chiefly
to themselves and their immediate sphere; while there are some whose
right is representative, like that of Jesus, fit to guide the moral
thought of mankind; and we cherish and revere these latter because they
corroborate the ideals we wish to hold before us.
It matters little for these larger purposes whether the sins or virtues
of conspicuous persons are conscious or not; our concern is with what
they stand for in the general mind. In fact conscious wickedness is
comparatively unimportant, because it implies that the individual
is divided in his own mind, and therefore weak. The most effective
ill-doers believe in themselves and have a quiet conscience. And, in
the same way, goodness is most effectual when it takes itself as a
matter of course and feels no self-complacency.
Blame and punishment, then, are essentially symbolic, their function
being to define and enforce the public will, and in no way imply that
the offenders are of a different nature from the rest of us. We feel
it to be true that with a little different training and surroundings
we might have committed almost any crime for which men are sent to
prison, and can readily understand that criminals should not commonly
feel that they are worse than others. The same principle applies to
those malefactors, more dangerous perhaps, who keep within the law, and
yet are terribly punished from time to time by public opinion.
Perhaps it would be well if both those who suffer punishment and those
who inflict it were more distinctly aware of its symbolic character
and function. The former might find their sense of justice appeased
by perceiving that though what they did was natural and perhaps not
consciously wrong, it may still need to be discredited and atoned
for. The culprit is not separated from society by his punishment, but
restored to it. It is his way of service; and if he takes it in the
right spirit he is better off than those who do wrong but are not
punished.
The rest of us, on the other hand, might realize that those in the
pillory are our representatives, who suffer, in a real sense, for us.
This would disincline us to spend in a cheap abuse of conspicuous
offenders that moral ardor whose proper function is the correction of
our own life. The spectacle of punishment is not for us to gloat over,
but to remind us of our sins, which, as springing from the same nature
and society, are sure to be much the same as that of the one punished.
It is precisely because he is like us that he is punished. If he were
radically different he would belong in an insane asylum, and punishment
would be mere cruelty.
Under the larger view of mind responsibility is broadened, because
we recognize a broader reach of causation, but by no means lost in
an abstract “society.” It goes with power and increases rapidly in
proportion as the evil comes nearer the sphere of the individual’s
voluntary action, so that each of us is peculiarly responsible for the
moral state of his own trade, family, or social connection. Contrary
to a prevalent impression, it is in these familiar relations that
the individual is least of all justified in being no better than his
environment.
Every act of the will, especially where the will is most at home,
should be affirmative and constructive; it being the function and
meaning of individuality that each one should be, in the direction of
his chief activities, something other and better than his surroundings.
Once admit the plea “I may do what other people do,” and the basis of
righteousness is gone; perhaps there is no moral fallacy so widespread
and so pernicious as this. It is these no-worse-than-other-people
decisions that paralyze the moral life in the one and in the whole,
involving a sort of moral _panmixia_, as the biologists say, which,
lacking any progressive impulse, must result in deterioration. In the
end it will justify anything, since there are always bad examples to
fall back upon.
It is commonly futile, however, to require any sharp break with the
past; we must be content with an upward endeavor and tendency. It is
quite true that we are all involved in a net of questionable practices
from which we can only escape a little at a time and in coöperation
with our associates.
It is an error to imagine that the doctrine of individual
responsibility is always the expedient and edifying one in matters of
conduct. There is a sort of people who grow indignant whenever general
causes are insisted upon, apparently convinced that whether these are
real or not it is immoral to believe in them. But it is not invariably
a good thing to urge the will, since this, if over-stimulated, becomes
fagged, stale, and discouraged. Often it is better that one should
let himself go, and trust himself to the involuntary forces, to the
nature of things, to God. The nervous or strained person only harasses
and weakens his will by fixing attention upon it: it will work on
more effectually if he looks away from it, calming himself by a view
of the larger whole; and not without reason Spinoza counts among the
advantages of determinism “the attainment of happiness by man through
realizing his intimate union with the whole nature of things; the
distinction between things in our power and things not in our power;
the avoidance of all disturbing passions, and the performance of social
duties from rational desire for the common good.”[4]
An obvious moral defect of the unbalanced doctrine of responsibility
is that it permits the successful to despise the unfortunate, in the
belief that the latter “have only themselves to blame,” a belief not
countenanced by the larger view of fact. We may pardon this doctrine
when it makes one too hard on himself or on successful wrong-doers, but
as a rod with which to beat those already down it is despicable.
The annals of religion show that the moral life has always these
two aspects, the particular and the general, as in the doctrines of
freedom and predestination, or in the wrestlings with sin followed
by self-abandonment that we find in the literature of conversion.[5]
Perhaps we may say that the deterministic attitude is morally good
in at least two classes of cases: First, for nervous, conscientious
individuals, like Spinoza, whose wills need rather calming than
stimulating, also for any one who may be even temporarily in a state of
mental strain; second, in dealing on a large scale with social or moral
questions whose causes must be treated dispassionately and in a mass.
These questions of free-will _versus_ law, and the like, are but
little, if at all, questions of fact—when we get down to definite
facts bearing upon the matter we find little or no disagreement—but
of point of view and emphasis. If you fix attention on the individual
phase of things and see life as a theatre of personal action, then
the corresponding ideas of private will, responsibility, praise, and
blame rise before you; if you regard its total aspect you see tendency,
evolution, law and impersonal grandeur. Each of these is a half truth
needing to be completed by the other; the larger truth, including both,
being that life is an organic whole, presenting itself with equal
reality in individual and general aspects. Argument upon such questions
is without limit—since there is really nothing at issue—and in that
sense the problem of freedom _versus_ law is insoluble.
Above all, the organic view of mind calls for social knowledge as the
basis of morality. We live in a system, and to achieve right ends, or
any rational ends whatever, we must learn to understand that system.
The public mind must emerge somewhat from its subconscious condition
and know and guide its own processes.
Both consciously and unconsciously the larger mind is continually
building itself up into wholes—fashions, traditions, institutions,
tendencies, and the like—which spread and diversify like the branches
of a tree, and so generate an ever higher and more various structure
of differentiated thought and symbols. The immediate motor and guide
of this growth is interest, and wherever that points social structure
comes into being, as a picture grows where the artist moves his pencil.
Visible society is, indeed, literally, a work of art, slow and mostly
subconscious in its production—as great art often is—full of grotesque
and wayward traits, but yet of inexhaustible beauty and fascination. It
is this we find in the history of old civilizations, getting from it
the completed work of the artist without that strain and confusion of
production which defaces the present. We get it, especially, not from
the history of the theorist or the statistician, but from the actual,
naïve, human record to be found in memoirs, in popular literature, in
architecture, painting, sculpture, and music, in the industrial arts,
in every unforced product of the mind.
Social organization is nothing less than this variegation of life,
taken in the widest sense possible. It should not be conceived as
the product merely of definite and utilitarian purpose, but as the
total expression of conscious and subconscious tendency, the slow
crystallization in many forms and colors of the life of the human
spirit.
Any fairly distinct and durable detail of this structure may be called
a social type; this being a convenient term to use when we wish to
break up the whole into parts, for analysis or description. Thus there
are types of personality, of political structure, of religion, of
classes, of the family, of art, of language; also of processes, like
communication, coöperation, and competition; and so on. The whole is
so various that from every new point of view new forms are revealed.
Social types are analogous to the genera, species, and varieties of
the animal world, in being parts of one living whole and yet having a
relative continuity and distinctness which is susceptible of detailed
study. Like biological types, also, they exist in related systems and
orders, are subject to variation, compete with one another, flourish
and decay, may be flexible or rigid, and may or may not form prolific
crosses with one another.
Without forgetting to see life as individuals, we must learn to see it
also as types, processes, organization, the latter being just as real
as the former. And especially, in order to see the matter truly, should
we be able to interpret individuals by wholes, and _vice versa_.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] See his essay on Coleridge.
[4] Pollock’s Spinoza, 2d ed., 195.
[5] Amply expounded, with due stress on the moral value of letting-go,
by William James, in his Varieties of Religious Experience: “This
abandonment of self-responsibility seems to be the fundamental act
in specifically religious, as distinguished from moral practice. It
antedates theologies and is independent of philosophies ... it is
capable of entering into closest marriage with every speculative
creed.” Page 289.
CHAPTER III
PRIMARY GROUPS
MEANING OF PRIMARY GROUPS—FAMILY, PLAYGROUND, AND NEIGHBORHOOD—HOW
FAR INFLUENCED BY LARGER SOCIETY—MEANING AND PERMANENCE OF “HUMAN
NATURE”—PRIMARY GROUPS THE NURSERY OF HUMAN NATURE.
By primary groups I mean those characterized by intimate face-to-face
association and coöperation. They are primary in several senses, but
chiefly in that they are fundamental in forming the social nature
and ideals of the individual. The result of intimate association,
psychologically, is a certain fusion of individualities in a common
whole, so that one’s very self, for many purposes at least, is the
common life and purpose of the group. Perhaps the simplest way of
describing this wholeness is by saying that it is a “we”; it involves
the sort of sympathy and mutual identification for which “we” is the
natural expression. One lives in the feeling of the whole and finds the
chief aims of his will in that feeling.
It is not to be supposed that the unity of the primary group is
one of mere harmony and love. It is always a differentiated and
usually a competitive unity, admitting of self-assertion and various
appropriative passions; but these passions are socialized by sympathy,
and come, or tend to come, under the discipline of a common spirit. The
individual will be ambitious, but the chief object of his ambition
will be some desired place in the thought of the others, and he will
feel allegiance to common standards of service and fair play. So the
boy will dispute with his fellows a place on the team, but above such
disputes will place the common glory of his class and school.
The most important spheres of this intimate association and
coöperation—though by no means the only ones—are the family, the
play-group of children, and the neighborhood or community group of
elders. These are practically universal, belonging to all times and
all stages of development; and are accordingly a chief basis of what
is universal in human nature and human ideals. The best comparative
studies of the family, such as those of Westermarck[6] or Howard,[7]
show it to us as not only a universal institution, but as more alike
the world over than the exaggeration of exceptional customs by an
earlier school had led us to suppose. Nor can any one doubt the general
prevalence of play-groups among children or of informal assemblies
of various kinds among their elders. Such association is clearly the
nursery of human nature in the world about us, and there is no apparent
reason to suppose that the case has anywhere or at any time been
essentially different.
As regards play, I might, were it not a matter of common observation,
multiply illustrations of the universality and spontaneity of the group
discussion and coöperation to which it gives rise. The general fact is
that children, especially boys after about their twelfth year, live in
fellowships in which their sympathy, ambition and honor are engaged
even more, often, than they are in the family. Most of us can recall
examples of the endurance by boys of injustice and even cruelty, rather
than appeal from their fellows to parents or teachers—as, for instance,
in the hazing so prevalent at schools, and so difficult, for this very
reason, to repress. And how elaborate the discussion, how cogent the
public opinion, how hot the ambitions in these fellowships.
Nor is this facility of juvenile association, as is sometimes supposed,
a trait peculiar to English and American boys; since experience
among our immigrant population seems to show that the offspring of
the more restrictive civilizations of the continent of Europe form
self-governing play-groups with almost equal readiness. Thus Miss
Jane Addams, after pointing out that the “gang” is almost universal,
speaks of the interminable discussion which every detail of the gang’s
activity receives, remarking that “in these social folk-motes, so to
speak, the young citizen learns to act upon his own determination.”[8]
Of the neighborhood group it may be said, in general, that from the
time men formed permanent settlements upon the land, down, at least,
to the rise of modern industrial cities, it has played a main part in
the primary, heart-to-heart life of the people. Among our Teutonic
forefathers the village community was apparently the chief sphere of
sympathy and mutual aid for the commons all through the “dark” and
middle ages, and for many purposes it remains so in rural districts
at the present day. In some countries we still find it with all its
ancient vitality, notably in Russia, where the mir, or self-governing
village group, is the main theatre of life, along with the family, for
perhaps fifty millions of peasants.
In our own life the intimacy of the neighborhood has been broken up
by the growth of an intricate mesh of wider contacts which leaves us
strangers to people who live in the same house. And even in the country
the same principle is at work, though less obviously, diminishing our
economic and spiritual community with our neighbors. How far this
change is a healthy development, and how far a disease, is perhaps
still uncertain.
Besides these almost universal kinds of primary association, there
are many others whose form depends upon the particular state of
civilization; the only essential thing, as I have said, being a certain
intimacy and fusion of personalities. In our own society, being little
bound by place, people easily form clubs, fraternal societies and the
like, based on congeniality, which may give rise to real intimacy. Many
such relations are formed at school and college, and among men and
women brought together in the first instance by their occupations—as
workmen in the same trade, or the like. Where there is a little common
interest and activity, kindness grows like weeds by the roadside.
But the fact that the family and neighborhood groups are ascendant in
the open and plastic time of childhood makes them even now incomparably
more influential than all the rest.
Primary groups are primary in the sense that they give the individual
his earliest and completest experience of social unity, and also in
the sense that they do not change in the same degree as more elaborate
relations, but form a comparatively permanent source out of which the
latter are ever springing. Of course they are not independent of the
larger society, but to some extent reflect its spirit; as the German
family and the German school bear somewhat distinctly the print of
German militarism. But this, after all, is like the tide setting back
into creeks, and does not commonly go very far. Among the German,
and still more among the Russian, peasantry are found habits of free
coöperation and discussion almost uninfluenced by the character of the
state; and it is a familiar and well-supported view that the village
commune, self-governing as regards local affairs and habituated to
discussion, is a very widespread institution in settled communities,
and the continuator of a similar autonomy previously existing in the
clan. “It is man who makes monarchies and establishes republics, but
the commune seems to come directly from the hand of God.”[9]
In our own cities the crowded tenements and the general economic and
social confusion have sorely wounded the family and the neighborhood,
but it is remarkable, in view of these conditions, what vitality they
show; and there is nothing upon which the conscience of the time is
more determined than upon restoring them to health.
These groups, then, are springs of life, not only for the individual
but for social institutions. They are only in part moulded by special
traditions, and, in larger degree, express a universal nature. The
religion or government of other civilizations may seem alien to us, but
the children or the family group wear the common life, and with them
we can always make ourselves at home.
By human nature, I suppose, we may understand those sentiments and
impulses that are human in being superior to those of lower animals,
and also in the sense that they belong to mankind at large, and not
to any particular race or time. It means, particularly, sympathy and
the innumerable sentiments into which sympathy enters, such as love,
resentment, ambition, vanity, hero-worship, and the feeling of social
right and wrong.[10]
Human nature in this sense is justly regarded as a comparatively
permanent element in society. Always and everywhere men seek honor and
dread ridicule, defer to public opinion, cherish their goods and their
children, and admire courage, generosity, and success. It is always
safe to assume that people are and have been human.
It is true, no doubt, that there are differences of race capacity,
so great that a large part of mankind are possibly incapable of any
high kind of social organization. But these differences, like those
among individuals of the same race, are subtle, depending upon some
obscure intellectual deficiency, some want of vigor, or slackness of
moral fibre, and do not involve unlikeness in the generic impulses of
human nature. In these all races are very much alike. The more insight
one gets into the life of savages, even those that are reckoned the
lowest, the more human, the more like ourselves, they appear. Take for
instance the natives of Central Australia, as described by Spencer
and Gillen,[11] tribes having no definite government or worship and
scarcely able to count to five. They are generous to one another,
emulous of virtue as they understand it, kind to their children and to
the aged, and by no means harsh to women. Their faces as shown in the
photographs are wholly human and many of them attractive.
And when we come to a comparison between different stages in the
development of the same race, between ourselves, for instance, and
the Teutonic tribes of the time of Cæsar, the difference is neither
in human nature nor in capacity, but in organization, in the range
and complexity of relations, in the diverse expression of powers and
passions essentially much the same.
There is no better proof of this generic likeness of human nature than
in the ease and joy with which the modern man makes himself at home
in literature depicting the most remote and varied phases of life—in
Homer, in the Nibelung tales, in the Hebrew Scriptures, in the legends
of the American Indians, in stories of frontier life, of soldiers and
sailors, of criminals and tramps, and so on. The more penetratingly
any phase of human life is studied the more an essential likeness to
ourselves is revealed.
To return to primary groups: the view here maintained is that human
nature is not something existing separately in the individual, but a
_group-nature or primary phase of society_, a relatively simple and
general condition of the social mind. It is something more, on the
one hand, than the mere instinct that is born in us—though that enters
into it—and something less, on the other, than the more elaborate
development of ideas and sentiments that makes up institutions. It
is the nature which is developed and expressed in those simple,
face-to-face groups that are somewhat alike in all societies; groups
of the family, the playground, and the neighborhood. In the essential
similarity of these is to be found the basis, in experience, for
similar ideas and sentiments in the human mind. In these, everywhere,
human nature comes into existence. Man does not have it at birth; he
cannot acquire it except through fellowship, and it decays in isolation.
If this view does not recommend itself to common-sense I do not know
that elaboration will be of much avail. It simply means the application
at this point of the idea that society and individuals are inseparable
phases of a common whole, so that wherever we find an individual fact
we may look for a social fact to go with it. If there is a universal
nature in persons there must be something universal in association to
correspond to it.
What else can human nature be than a trait of primary groups? Surely
not an attribute of the separate individual—supposing there were any
such thing—since its typical characteristics, such as affection,
ambition, vanity, and resentment, are inconceivable apart from society.
If it belongs, then, to man in association, what kind or degree of
association is required to develop it? Evidently nothing elaborate,
because elaborate phases of society are transient and diverse, while
human nature is comparatively stable and universal. In short the
family and neighborhood life is essential to its genesis and nothing
more is.
Here as everywhere in the study of society we must learn to see mankind
in psychical wholes, rather than in artificial separation. We must see
and feel the communal life of family and local groups as immediate
facts, not as combinations of something else. And perhaps we shall do
this best by recalling our own experience and extending it through
sympathetic observation. What, in our life, is the family and the
fellowship; what do we know of the we-feeling? Thought of this kind may
help us to get a concrete perception of that primary group-nature of
which everything social is the outgrowth.
FOOTNOTES:
[6] The History of Human Marriage.
[7] A History of Matrimonial Institutions.
[8] Newer Ideals of Peace, 177.
[9] De Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol. i, chap. 5.
[10] These matters are expounded at some length in the writer’s Human
Nature and the Social Order.
[11] The Native Tribes of Central Australia. Compare also Darwin’s
views and examples given in chap. 7 of his Descent of Man.
CHAPTER IV
PRIMARY IDEALS
NATURE OF PRIMARY IDEALISM—THE IDEAL OF A “WE” OR MORAL UNITY—IT DOES
NOT EXCLUDE SELF-ASSERTION—IDEALS SPRINGING FROM HOSTILITY—LOYALTY,
TRUTH, SERVICE—KINDNESS—LAWFULNESS—FREEDOM—THE DOCTRINE OF NATURAL
RIGHT—BEARING OF PRIMARY IDEALISM UPON EDUCATION AND PHILANTHROPY.
Life in the primary groups gives rise to social ideals which, as they
spring from similar experiences, have much in common throughout the
human race. And these naturally become the motive and test of social
progress. Under all systems men strive, however blindly, to realize
objects suggested by the familiar experience of primary association.
Where do we get our notions of love, freedom, justice, and the like
which we are ever applying to social institutions? Not from abstract
philosophy, surely, but from the actual life of simple and widespread
forms of society, like the family or the play-group. In these relations
mankind realizes itself, gratifies its primary needs, in a fairly
satisfactory manner, and from the experience forms standards of what it
is to expect from more elaborate association. Since groups of this sort
are never obliterated from human experience, but flourish more or less
under all kinds of institutions, they remain an enduring criterion by
which the latter are ultimately judged.
Of course these simpler relations are not uniform for all societies,
but vary considerably with race, with the general state of
civilization, and with the particular sort of institutions that may
prevail. The primary groups themselves are subject to improvement and
decay, and need to be watched and cherished with a very special care.
Neither is it claimed that, at the best, they realize ideal conditions;
only that they approach them more nearly than anything else in
general experience, and so form the practical basis on which higher
imaginations are built. They are not always pleasant or righteous, but
they almost always contain elements from which ideals of pleasantness
and righteousness may be formed.
The ideal that grows up in familiar association may be said to be a
part of human nature itself. In its most general form it is that of a
moral whole or community wherein individual minds are merged and the
higher capacities of the members find total and adequate expression.
And it grows up because familiar association fills our minds with
imaginations of the thought and feeling of other members of the group,
and of the group as a whole, so that, for many purposes, we really make
them a part of ourselves and identify our self-feeling with them.
Children and savages do not formulate any such ideal, but they have it
nevertheless; they see it; they see themselves and their fellows as
an indivisible, though various, “we,” and they desire this “we” to be
harmonious, happy, and successful. How heartily one may merge himself
in the family and in the fellowships of youth is perhaps within the
experience of all of us; and we come to feel that the same spirit
should extend to our country, our race, our world. “All the abuses
which are the objects of reform ... are unconsciously amended in the
intercourse of friends.”[12]
A congenial family life is the immemorial type of moral unity, and
source of many of the terms—such as brotherhood, kindness, and
the like—which describe it. The members become merged by intimate
association into a whole wherein each age and sex participates in
its own way. Each lives in imaginative contact with the minds of the
others, and finds in them the dwelling-place of his social self, of his
affections, ambitions, resentments, and standards of right and wrong.
Without uniformity, there is yet unity, a free, pleasant, wholesome,
fruitful, common life.
As to the playground, Mr. Joseph Lee, in an excellent paper on Play as
a School of the Citizen, gives the following account of the merging of
the one in the whole that may be learned from sport. The boy, he says,
“is deeply participating in a common purpose. The team and the
plays that it executes are present in a very vivid manner to his
consciousness. His conscious individuality is more thoroughly lost
in the sense of membership than perhaps it ever becomes in any other
way. So that the sheer experience of citizenship in its simplest and
essential form—of the sharing in a public consciousness, of having the
social organization present as a controlling ideal in your heart—is
very intense....
Along with the sense of the team as a mechanical instrument, and
unseparated from it in the boy’s mind, is the consciousness of it
as the embodiment of a common purpose. There is in team play a very
intimate experience of the ways in which such a purpose is built up
and made effective. You feel, though without analysis, the subtle
ways in which a single strong character breaks out the road ahead
and gives confidence to the rest to follow; how the creative power
of one ardent imagination, bravely sustained, makes possible the
putting through of the play as he conceives it. You feel to the marrow
of your bones how each loyal member contributes to the salvation of
all the others by holding the conception of the whole play so firmly
in his mind as to enable them to hold it, and to participate in his
single-minded determination to see it carried out. You have intimate
experience of the ways in which individual members contribute to the
team and of how the team, in turn, builds up their spiritual nature....
And the team is not only an extension of the player’s consciousness;
it is a part of his personality. His participation has deepened from
coöperation to membership. Not only is he now a part of the team, but
the team is a part of him.”[13]
Moral unity, as this illustration implies, admits and rewards
strenuous ambition; but this ambition must either be for the success
of the group, or at least not inconsistent with that. The fullest
self-realization will belong to the one who embraces in a passionate
self-feeling the aims of the fellowship, and spends his life in
fighting for their attainment.
The ideal of moral unity I take to be the mother, as it were, of all
social ideals.
It is, then, not my aim to depreciate the self-assertive passions.
I believe that they are fierce, inextinguishable, indispensable.
Competition and the survival of the fittest are as righteous as
kindness and coöperation, and not necessarily opposed to them: an
adequate view will embrace and harmonize these diverse aspects. The
point I wish particularly to bring out in this chapter is that the
normal self is moulded in primary groups to be a social self whose
ambitions are formed by the common thought of the group.
In their crudest form such passions as lust, greed, revenge, the pride
of power and the like are not, distinctively, _human_ nature at all,
but animal nature, and so far as we rise into the spirit of family or
neighborhood association we control and subordinate them. They are
rendered human only so far as they are brought under the discipline of
sympathy, and refined into sentiments, such as love, resentment, and
ambition. And in so far as they are thus humanized they become capable
of useful function.
Take the greed of gain, for example, the ancient sin of avarice,
the old wolf, as Dante says, that gets more prey than all the other
beasts.[14] The desire of possession is in itself a good thing, a phase
of self-realization and a cause of social improvement. It is immoral
or greedy only when it is without adequate control from sympathy,
when the self realized is a narrow self. In that case it is a vice
of isolation or weak social consciousness, and indicates a state of
mind intermediate between the brutal and the fully human or moral,
when desire is directed toward social objects—wealth or power—but is
not social in its attitude toward others who desire the same objects.
Intimate association has the power to allay greed. One will hardly
be greedy as against his family or close friends, though very decent
people will be so as against almost any one else. Every one must have
noticed that after frank association, even of a transient character,
with another person, one usually has a sense of kindred with him which
makes one ashamed to act greedily at his expense.
Those who dwell preponderantly upon the selfish aspect of human nature
and flout as sentimentalism the “altruistic” conception of it, make
their chief error in failing to see that our self itself is altruistic,
that the object of our higher greed is some desired place in the minds
of other men, and that through this it is possible to enlist ordinary
human nature in the service of ideal aims. The improvement of society
does not call for any essential change in human nature, but, chiefly,
for a larger and higher application of its familiar impulses.
I know, also, that the most truculent behavior may be exalted into
an ideal, like the ferocity of Samuel, when he hewed Agag to pieces
before the Lord,[15] or of the orthodox Christian of a former age in
the destruction of heretics. In general there is always a morality of
opposition, springing from the need of the sympathetic group to assert
itself in the struggle for existence. Even at the present day this more
or less idealizes destructiveness and deceit in the conflicts of war,
if not of commerce.
But such precepts are secondary, not ideals in the same primary and
enduring sense that loyalty and kindness are. They shine by reflected
light, and get their force mainly from the belief that they express the
requirements of the “we” group in combating its enemies. Flourishing
at certain stages of development because they are requisite under
the prevailing conditions of destructive conflict, they are slowly
abandoned or transformed when these conditions change. Mankind at large
has no love of them for their own sake, though individuals, classes,
or even nations may acquire them as a habit. With the advance of
civilization conflict itself is brought more and more under the control
of those principles that prevail in primary groups, and, so far as this
is the case, conduct which violates such principles ceases to have any
ideal value.
To break up the ideal of a moral whole into particular ideals is an
artificial process which every thinker would probably carry out in his
own way. Perhaps, however, the most salient principles are loyalty,
lawfulness, and freedom.
In so far as one identifies himself with a whole, loyalty to that
whole is loyalty to himself; it is self-realization, something in
which one cannot fail without losing self-respect. Moreover this is a
larger self, leading out into a wider and richer life, and appealing,
therefore, to enthusiasm and the need of quickening ideals. One
is never more human, and as a rule never happier, than when he is
sacrificing his narrow and merely private interest to the higher call
of the congenial group. And without doubt the natural genesis of this
sentiment is in the intimacy of face-to-face coöperation. It is rather
the rule than the exception in the family, and grows up among children
and youth so fast as they learn to think and act to common ends. The
team feeling described above illustrates it as well as anything.
Among the ideals inseparable from loyalty are those of truth, service,
and kindness, always conceived as due to the intimate group rather than
to the world at large.
Truth or good faith toward other members of a fellowship is, so far as
I know, a universal human ideal. It does not involve any abstract love
of veracity, and is quite consistent with deception toward the outside
world, being essentially “truth of intercourse” or fair dealing among
intimates. There are few, even among those reckoned lawless, who will
not keep faith with one who has the gift of getting near to them in
spirit and making them feel that he is one of themselves. Thus Judge
Lindsey of Denver has worked a revolution among the neglected boys of
his city, by no other method than that of entering into the same moral
whole, becoming part of a “we” with them. He awakens their sense of
honor, trusts it, and is almost never disappointed. When he wishes to
send a boy to the reform school the latter promises to repair to the
institution at a given time and invariably does so. Among tramps a
similar sentiment prevails. “It will be found,” said a young man who
had spent the summer among vagrants, “that if they are treated square
they will do the same.”
The ideal of service likewise goes with the sense of unity. If there
is a vital whole the right aim of individual activity can be no other
than to serve that whole. And this is not so much a theory as a feeling
that will exist wherever the whole is felt. It is a poor sort of an
individual that does not feel the need to devote himself to the larger
purposes of the group. In our society many feel this need in youth and
express it on the playground who never succeed in realizing it among
the less intimate relations of business or professional life.
All mankind acknowledges kindness as the law of right intercourse
within a social group. By communion minds are fused into a sympathetic
whole, each part of which tends to share the life of all the rest,
so that kindness is a common joy, and harshness a common pain. It is
the simplest, most attractive, and most diffused of human ideals. The
golden rule springs directly from human nature.
Accordingly this ideal has been bound up with association in all past
times and among all peoples: it was a matter of course that when men
acted together in war, industry, devotion, sport, or what not, they
formed a brotherhood or friendship. It is perhaps only in modern days,
along with the great and sudden differentiation of activities, that
feeling has failed to keep up, and the idea of coöperation without
friendship has become familiar.
Mr. Westermarck, than whom there is no better authority on a question
of this sort, has filled several chapters of his work on the Origin
and Development of Moral Ideas with evidence of the universality of
kindness and the kindly ideal. After showing at length that uncivilized
people recognize the duty of kindness and support from mother to child,
father to child, child to parent, and among brethren and kinsmen, he
goes on to say:[16] “But the duty of helping the needy and protecting
those in danger goes beyond the limits of the family and the _gens_.
Uncivilized peoples are, as a rule, described as kind toward members
of their own community or tribe. Between themselves charity is enjoined
as a duty and generosity is praised as a virtue. Indeed their customs
regarding mutual aid are often much more stringent than our own. And
this applies even to the lowest savages.”
Beginning with the Australians, he quotes the statement of Spencer and
Gillen that their treatment of one another “is marked on the whole by
considerable kindness, that is, of course, in the case of members of
friendly groups, with every now and then the perpetration of acts of
cruelty.” Concerning the North American Indians he cites many writers.
Catlin says “to their friends there are no people on earth that are
more kind.” Adair that “they are very kind and liberal to every one of
their own tribe, even to the last morsel of food they enjoy”; also that
Nature’s school “teaches them the plain, easy rule, Do to others as you
would be done by.” Morgan reports that “among the Iroquois kindness to
the orphan, hospitality to all, and a common brotherhood were among the
doctrines held up for acceptance by their religious instructors.” An
Iroquois “would surrender his dinner to feed the hungry, vacate his bed
to refresh the weary, and give up his apparel to clothe the naked.”
And so Westermarck goes on, in the exhaustive way familiar to readers
of his works, to show that like sentiments prevail the world over.
Kropotkin has collected similar evidence in his Mutual Aid a Factor in
Civilization. The popular notion of savages as lacking in the gentler
feelings is an error springing from the external, usually hostile,
nature of our contact with them. Indeed, a state of things, such as
is found in our own cities, where want and plenty exist side by side
without the latter feeling any compulsion to relieve the former, is
shocking and incomprehensible to many savages.
Ordinarily the ideal of kindness, in savage and civilized societies
alike, applies only to those within the sympathetic group; the main
difference between civilization and savagery, in this regard, being
that under the former the group tends to enlarge. One reason for the
restriction is that kindness is aroused by sympathy, and can have
little life except as our imaginations are opened to the lives of
others and they are made part of ourselves. Even the Christian church,
as history shows, has for the most part inculcated kindness only
to those within its own pale, or within a particular sect; and the
modern ideal of a kindness embracing all humanity (modern at least
so far as western nations are concerned) is connected with a growing
understanding of the unity of the race.
Every intimate group, like every individual, experiences conflicting
impulses within itself, and as the individual feels the need of
definite principles to shape his conduct and give him peace, so the
group needs law or rule for the same purpose. It is not merely that the
over-strong or the insubordinate must be restrained, but that all alike
may have some definite criterion of what the good member ought to do.
It is a mere fact of psychology that where a social whole exists it may
be as painful to do wrong as to suffer it—because one’s own spirit is
divided—and the common need is for harmony through a law, framed in the
total interest, which every one can and must obey.
This need of rules to align differentiated impulse with the good of
the whole is nowhere more apparent than on the playground. Miss Buck,
the author of an instructive work on Boys’ Self-Governing Clubs,
suggests that the elementary form of equity is “taking turns,” as at
swings and the like; and any one who has shared in a boys’ camp will
recall the constant demand, by the boys themselves, for rules of this
nature. There must be a fair distribution of privileges as to boats,
games, and so on, and an equal distribution of food. And we learn from
Robert Woods that gangs of boys on the streets of cities generally
have a “judge” to whom all disputes are referred if no agreement is
otherwise reached.[17]
No doubt every one remembers how the idea of justice is developed
in children’s games. There is always something to be done, in which
various parts are to be taken, success depending upon their efficient
distribution. All see this and draw from experience the idea that there
is a higher principle that ought to control the undisciplined ambition
of individuals. “Rough games,” says Miss Buck, “in many respects
present in miniature the conditions of a society where an ideal state
of justice, freedom and equality prevails.”[18] Mr. Joseph Lee, in the
paper quoted above, expounds the matter at more length and with much
insight.
You may be very intent to beat the other man in the race, but after
experience of many contests the fair promise of whose morning has
been clouded over by the long and many-worded dispute terminating in
a general row, with indecisive and unsatisfying result, you begin
dimly to perceive that you and the other fellows and the rest of the
crowd, for the very reason that you are contestants and prospective
contestants, have interests in common—interests in the establishment
and maintenance of those necessary rules and regulations without
which satisfactory contests cannot be carried on.... The child’s need
of conflict is from a desire not to exterminate his competitor, but
to overcome him and to have his own superiority acknowledged. The
boy desires to be somebody; but being somebody is to him a social
achievement. And though there is temptation to pervert justice, to
try to get the decision when you have not really furnished the proof,
there is also a motive against such procedure. The person whom you
really and finally want to convince is yourself. Your deepest desire
is to beat the other boy, not merely to seem to beat him. By playing
unfairly and forcing decisions in your own favor, you may possibly
cheat the others, but you cannot cheat yourself.
But the decisions in most of the disputes have behind them the
further, more obviously social, motive of carrying on a successful
game. The sense of common interest has been stretched so as to take
the competitive impulse itself into camp, domesticate it, and make it
a part of the social system. The acutely realized fact that a society
of chronic kickers can never play a game or anything else, comes to be
seen against the background of a possible orderly arrangement of which
one has had occasional experience, and with which one has come at last
to sympathize; there comes to be to some extent an identification
of one’s own interests and purposes with the interests and purposes
of the whole. Certainly the decisions of the group as to whether
Jimmy was out at first, as to who came out last, and whether Mary
Ann was really caught, are felt as community and not as individual
decisions.[19]
No doubt American boys have more of the spirit and practice of this
sort of organization than those of any other country, except possibly
England: they have the constant spectacle of self-government among
their elders, and also, perhaps, some advantage in natural aptitude to
help them on. But it is doubtful if there is any great difference among
the white peoples in the latter regard. American children of German
and Irish descent are not inferior to the Anglo-Saxons, and among the
newer immigrants the Jewish children, at least, show a marked aptitude
for organization. The question might profitably be investigated in our
great cities.
Of course the ideals derived from juvenile experience are carried
over into the wider life, and men always find it easy to conceive
righteousness in terms of fair play. “The Social Question,” says a
penetrative writer, “is forever an attack upon what, in some form, is
thought to be unfair privilege.”[20]
The law or rule that human nature demands has a democratic principle
latent in it, because it must be one congenial to general sentiment.
Explicit democracy, however—deciding by popular vote and the like—is
not primary and general like the need of law, but is rather a mechanism
for deciding what the rule is to be, and no more natural than the
appeal to authority. Indeed, there seems to be, among children as among
primitive peoples, a certain reluctance to ascribe laws to the mere
human choice of themselves and their fellows. They wish to assign them
to a higher source and to think of them as having an unquestionable
sanction. So far as my own observation goes, even American boys prefer
to receive rules from tradition or from their elders, when they can.
Nothing is easier than for a parent, or mentor of any kind, to be a
lawgiver to children, if only he has their confidence, and if the laws
themselves prove workable. But the test of law is social and popular;
it must suit the general mind. If, for instance, a man takes a group of
boys camping, and has their confidence, they will gladly receive rules
from him, expecting, of course, that they will be good rules. But if
they prove to be unreasonable and troublesome, they will soon cease to
work.
Freedom is that phase of the social ideal which emphasizes
individuality. The whole to which we belong is made up of diverse
energies which enkindle one another by friction; and its vigor requires
that these have play. Thus the fierce impulses of ambition and pride
may be as organic as anything else—provided they are sufficiently
humanized as to their objects—and are to be interfered with only
when they become destructive or oppressive. Moreover, we must not be
required to prove to others the beneficence of our peculiarity, but
should be allowed, if we wish, to “write _whim_ on the lintels of the
door-post.” Our desires and purposes, though social in their ultimate
nature, are apt to be unacceptable on first appearance, and the more so
in proportion to their value. Thus we feel a need to be let alone, and
sympathize with a similar need in others.
This is so familiar a principle, especially among English and
Americans, to whose temperament and traditions it is peculiarly
congenial, that I need not discuss it at length. It is a phase
of idealism that comes most vividly to consciousness when formal
and antiquated systems of control need to be broken up, as in the
eighteenth century. It then represented the appeal to human nature as
against outworn mechanism. Our whole social and political philosophy
still echoes that conflict.
The bearing of this view of human nature may perhaps be made clearer by
considering its relation to the familiar but now somewhat discredited
doctrine of Natural Right. This is traced from the speculations of
Greek philosophers down through Roman jurisprudence to Hobbes, Locke,
Rousseau, and others, who gave it its modern forms and through whose
works it became a factor in modern history. It was familiar to our
forefathers and is set forth in the Declaration of Independence.
According to it society is made up, primarily, of free individuals, who
must be held to create government and other institutions by a sort of
implied contract, yielding up a part of their natural right in order
to enjoy the benefits of organization. But if the organization does
not confer these benefits, then, as most writers held, it is wrong and
void, and the individuals may properly reclaim their natural freedom.
Now in form this doctrine is wholly at variance with evolutionary
thought. To the latter, society is an organic growth; there is no
individual apart from society, no freedom apart from organization,
no social contract of the sort taught by these philosophers. In its
practical applications, however, the teaching of natural right is not
so absurd and obsolete as is sometimes imagined. If it is true that
human nature is developed in primary groups which are everywhere much
the same, and that there also springs from these a common idealism
which institutions strive to express, we have a ground for somewhat
the same conclusions as come from the theory of a natural freedom
modified by contract. Natural freedom would correspond roughly to the
ideals generated and partly realized in primary association, the social
contract to the limitations these ideals encounter in seeking a larger
expression.
Indeed, is it not true that the natural rights of this philosophy—the
right to personal freedom, the right to labor, the right to property,
the right to open competition—are ideals which in reality sprang
then as they do now largely from what the philosophers knew of the
activities of men in small, face-to-face groups?
The reluctance to give up ideals like those of the Declaration of
Independence, without something equally simple and human to take their
place, is healthy and need not look far for theoretical justification.
The idea of the germinal character of primary association is one that
is fast making its way in education and philanthropy. As we learn that
man is altogether social and never seen truly except in connection with
his fellows, we fix our attention more and more on group conditions as
the source, for better or worse, of personal character, and come to
feel that we must work on the individual through the web of relations
in which he actually lives.
The school, for instance, must form a whole with the rest of life,
using the ideas generated by the latter as the starting-point of its
training. The public opinion and traditions of the scholars must be
respected and made an ally of discipline. Children’s associations
should be fostered and good objects suggested for their activity.
In philanthropy it is essential that the unity of the family be
regarded and its natural bonds not weakened for the sake of transient
benefit to the individual. Children, especially, must be protected
from the destructive kindness which inculcates irresponsibility in the
parent. In general the heart of reform is in control of the conditions
which act upon the family and neighborhood. When the housing, for
example, is of such a character as to make a healthy home life
impossible, the boys and girls are driven to the streets, the men into
saloons, and thus society is diseased at its source.
Without healthy play, especially group play, human nature cannot
rightly develop, and to preserve this, in the midst of the crowding
and aggressive commercialism of our cities, is coming to be seen as a
special need of the time. Democracy, it is now held, must recognize
as one of its essential functions the provision of ample spaces and
apparatus for this purpose, with enough judicious supervision to ensure
the ascendency of good play traditions. And with this must go the
suppression of child labor and other inhumane conditions.
Fruitful attention is being given to boys’ fellowships or “gangs.”
It appears—as any one who recalls his own boyhood might have
anticipated—that nearly all the juvenile population belong to such
fellowships, and put an ardent, though often misdirected, idealism
into them. “Almost every boy in the tenement-house quarters of the
district,” says Robert A. Woods, speaking of Boston, “is a member of
a gang. The boy who does not belong is not only the exception but
the very rare exception.”[21] In crowded neighborhoods, where there
are no playgrounds and street sports are unlawful, the human nature
of these gangs must take a semi-criminal direction; but with better
opportunities and guidance it turns quite as naturally to wholesome
sport and social service. Accordingly social settlements and similar
agencies are converting gangs into clubs, with the best results; and
there is also coming to be a regular organization of voluntary clubs in
affiliation with the public schools.
It is much the same in the country. In every village and township in
the land, I suppose, there are one or more groups of predatory boys
and hoydenish girls whose mischief is only the result of ill-directed
energy. If each of these could receive a little sympathetic attention
from kindred but wiser spirits, at least half of the crime and vice of
the next generation would almost certainly be done away with.
FOOTNOTES:
[12] Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, 283.
[13] Charities and the Commons, Aug. 3, 1907.
[14]
Antica lupa,
Che più che tutte l’altre bestie hai preda.
Purgatorio, XX, 10.
[15] 1 Samuel, 15:33.
[16] Vol. i, 540 _ff._
[17] The City Wilderness, 116.
[18] Boys’ Self-Governing Clubs, 4, 5.
[19] Charities and the Commons, Aug. 3. 1907, abridged.
[20] John Graham Brooks, The Social Unrest, 135.
[21] The City Wilderness, 113.
CHAPTER V
THE EXTENSION OF PRIMARY IDEALS
PRIMARY IDEALS UNDERLIE DEMOCRACY AND CHRISTIANITY—WHY THEY ARE NOT
ACHIEVED ON A LARGER SCALE—WHAT THEY REQUIRE FROM PERSONALITY—FROM
SOCIAL MECHANISM—THE PRINCIPLE OF COMPENSATION.
It will be found that those systems of larger idealism which are most
human and so of most enduring value, are based upon the ideals of
primary groups. Take, for instance, the two systems that have most
vitality at the present time—democracy and Christianity.
The aspirations of ideal democracy—including, of course, socialism,
and whatever else may go by a special name—are those naturally
springing from the playground or the local community; embracing
equal opportunity, fair play, the loyal service of all in the common
good, free discussion, and kindness to the weak. These are renewed
every day in the hearts of the people because they spring from and
are corroborated by familiar and homely experience. Moreover, modern
democracy as a historical current is apparently traceable back to the
village community life of the Teutonic tribes of northern Europe,
from which it descends through English constitutional liberty and the
American and French revolutions to its broad and deep channels of the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
And Christianity, as a social system, is based upon the family, its
ideals being traceable to the domestic circle of a Judaean carpenter.
God is a kind father; men and women are brothers and sisters; we are
all members one of another, doing as we would be done by and referring
all things to the rule of love. In so far as the church has departed
from these principles it has proved transient; these endure because
they are human.
But why is it that human nature is not more successful in achieving
these primary aims? They appear to be simple and reasonable, and one
asks why they are so little realized, why we are not, in fact, a moral
whole, a happy family.
It is not because we do not wish it. There can be no doubt, I should
say, that, leaving aside a comparatively few abnormal individuals,
whose influence is small, men in general have a natural allegiance to
the community ideal, and would gladly see it carried out on a large as
well as a small scale. And nearly all imaginative and aspiring persons
view it with enthusiasm, and would devote themselves to it with some
ardor and sacrifice if they saw clearly how they could do so with
effect. It is easy to imagine types of pure malignity in people of whom
we have little knowledge, but who ever came to know any one intimately
without finding that he had somewhere in him the impulses of a man and
a brother?
The failure to realize these impulses in practice is, of course, due
in part to moral weakness of a personal character, to the fact that
our higher nature has but an imperfect and transient mastery of our
lower, so that we never live up to our ideals. But going beyond this
and looking at the matter from the standpoint of the larger mind, the
cause of failure is seen to be the difficulty of organization. Even if
our intentions were always good, we should not succeed, because, to
make good intentions effective, they must be extended into a system.
In attempting to do this our constructive power is used up and our
ideals confused and discouraged. We are even led to create a kind of
institutions which, though good in certain aspects, may brutalize
or ossify the individual, so that primary idealism in him is almost
obliterated. The creation of a moral order on an ever-growing scale is
the great historical task of mankind, and the magnitude of it explains
all shortcomings.
From personality the building of a moral order requires not only good
impulses but character and capacity. The ideal must be worked out
with steadfastness, self-control, and intelligence. Even families and
fellowships, though usually on a higher level than more elaborate
structures, often break down, and commonly from lack of character in
their members. But if it is insufficient here, how much less will it
suffice for a righteous state. Our new order of life, with its great
extension of structure and its principle of freedom, is an ever severer
test of the political and moral fibre of mankind, of its power to hold
itself together in vast, efficient, plastic wholes. Whatever races or
social systems fail to produce this fibre must yield ascendency to
those which succeed.
This stronger personality depends also upon training; and whatever
peoples succeed in being righteous on a great scale will do so only by
adding to natural capacity an education suited to the growing demands
of the situation—one at the same time broad and special, technical and
humane. There can be no moral order that does not live in the mind of
the individual.
Besides personality—or rather correlative with it—there must be an
adequate mechanism of communication and organization. In small groups
the requirements of structure are so simple as to make little trouble,
but in proportion as the web of relations extends and diversifies,
they become more and more difficult to meet without sacrificing human
nature; so that, other things equal, the freedom and real unity of
the system are likely to vary inversely with its extent. It is only
because other things have not remained equal, because the mechanism has
been improved, that it has become possible, in a measure, to reconcile
freedom with extent.
Communication must be full and quick in order to give that promptness
in the give-and-take of suggestions upon which moral unity depends.
Gesture and speech ensure this in the face-to-face group; but only the
recent marvellous improvement of communicative machinery makes a free
mind on a great scale even conceivable. If there is no means of working
thought and sentiment into a whole by reciprocation, the unity of the
group cannot be other than inert and unhuman. This cause alone would
account for the lack of extended freedom previous to the nineteenth
century.
There must also be forms and customs of rational organization, through
which human nature may express itself in an orderly and effective
manner. Even children learn the need of regular discussion and
decision, while all bodies of adults meeting for deliberation find that
they can think organically only by observance of the rules which have
been worked out for such occasions. And if we are to have great and
stable nations, it is easy to see that these rules of order must become
a body of law and custom including most, if not all, of the familiar
institutions of society. These are a product of progressive invention,
trial, and survival as much as the railroad or the factory, and they
have in the long run the same purpose, that of the fuller expression of
human nature in a social system.
As might be expected from these conditions, there is a principle
of compensation at work in the growth of the larger mind. The more
betterment there is, the more of vital force, of human reason, feeling,
and choice, goes into it; and, as these are limited, improvement in one
respect is apt to be offset, at least in part or temporarily, by delay
or retrogression in others.
Thus a rapid improvement in the means of communication, as we see in
our own time, supplies the basis for a larger and freer society, and
yet it may, by disordering settled relations, and by fixing attention
too much upon mechanical phases of progress, bring in conditions of
confusion and injustice that are the opposite of free.
A very general fact of early political history is deterioration
by growth. The small state cannot escape its destiny as part of a
larger world, but must expand or perish. It grows in size, power, and
diversity by the necessities of its struggle for existence—as did
Rome, Athens, and a hundred other states—but in so doing sacrifices
human nature to military expediency and develops a mechanical or
despotic structure. This, in the long run, produces weakness, decay,
and conquest, or perhaps revolt and revolution. The requirements
of human nature—both direct, as expressed in social idealism, and
indirect, as felt in the ultimate weakness and failure of systems
which disregard them—are irrepressible. Gradually, therefore, through
improvement and through the survival of higher types in conflict, a
type of larger structure is developed which less sacrifices these
requirements.
Much of what is unfree and unhuman in our modern life comes from mere
inadequacy of mental and moral energy to meet the accumulating demands
upon it. In many quarters attention and effort must be lacking, and
where this is the case social relations fall to a low plane—just as a
teacher who has too much to do necessarily adopts a mechanical style
of instruction. So what we call “red tape” prevails in great clerical
offices because much business is done by persons of small ability, who
can work only under rule. And great bureaucratic systems, like the
Russian Empire, are of much the same nature.
In general the wrongs of the social system come much more from
inadequacy than from ill intention. It is indeed not to be expected
that all relations should be fully rational and sympathetic; we have to
be content with infusing reason and sympathy into what is most vital.
Society, then, as a moral organism, is a progressive creation,
tentatively wrought out through experiment, struggle, and survival.
Not only individuals but ideas, institutions, nations, and races do
their work upon it and perish. Its ideals, though simple in spirit, are
achieved through endless elaboration of means.
It will be my further endeavor to throw some light upon this striving
whole by considering certain phases of its organization, such as
Communication, Public Opinion, Sentiment, Classes, and Institutions;
always trying to see the whole in the part, the part in the whole, and
human nature in both.
_PART II_
COMMUNICATION
CHAPTER VI
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF COMMUNICATION
MEANING OF COMMUNICATION—ITS RELATION TO HUMAN NATURE—TO SOCIETY AT
LARGE.
By Communication is here meant the mechanism through which human
relations exist and develop—all the symbols of the mind, together with
the means of conveying them through space and preserving them in time.
It includes the expression of the face, attitude and gesture, the
tones of the voice, words, writing, printing, railways, telegraphs,
telephones, and whatever else may be the latest achievement in the
conquest of space and time. All these taken together, in the intricacy
of their actual combination, make up an organic whole corresponding to
the organic whole of human thought; and everything in the way of mental
growth has an external existence therein. The more closely we consider
this mechanism the more intimate will appear its relation to the inner
life of mankind, and nothing will more help us to understand the latter
than such consideration.
There is no sharp line between the means of communication and the rest
of the external world. In a sense all objects and actions are symbols
of the mind, and nearly anything may be used as a sign—as I may signify
the moon or a squirrel to a child by merely pointing at it, or by
imitating with the voice the chatter of the one or drawing an outline
of the other. But there is also, almost from the first, a conventional
development of communication, springing out of spontaneous signs but
soon losing evident connection with them, a system of standard symbols
existing for the mere purpose of conveying thought; and it is this we
have chiefly to consider.
Without communication the mind does not develop a true human nature,
but remains in an abnormal and nondescript state neither human nor
properly brutal. This is movingly illustrated by the case of Helen
Keller, who, as all the world knows, was cut off at eighteen months
from the cheerful ways of men by the loss of sight and hearing; and did
not renew the connection until she was nearly seven years old. Although
her mind was not wholly isolated during this period, since she retained
the use of a considerable number of signs learned during infancy,
yet her impulses were crude and uncontrolled, and her thought so
unconnected that she afterward remembered almost nothing that occurred
before the awakening which took place toward the close of her seventh
year.
The story of that awakening, as told by her teacher, gives as vivid a
picture as we need have of the significance to the individual mind of
the general fact and idea of communication. For weeks Miss Sullivan
had been spelling words into her hand which Helen had repeated and
associated with objects; but she had not yet grasped the idea of
language in general, the fact that everything had a name, and that
through names she could share her own experiences with others, and
learn theirs—the idea that there is _fellowship in thought_. This came
quite suddenly.
“This morning,” writes her teacher, “while she was washing, she wanted
to know the name for water.... I spelled w-a-t-e-r and thought no
more about it until after breakfast. Then it occurred to me that with
the help of this new word I might succeed in straightening out the
mug-milk difficulty [a confusion of ideas previously discussed]. We
went out into the pump-house and I made Helen hold her mug under the
pump while I pumped. As the cold water gushed forth filling the mug I
spelled w-a-t-e-r in Helen’s free hand. The word coming so close upon
the sensation of cold water rushing over her hand seemed to startle
her. She dropped the mug and stood as one transfixed. A new light came
into her face. She spelled water several times. Then she dropped on
the ground and asked for its name, and pointed to the pump and the
trellis, and suddenly turning round she asked for my name. I spelled
‘teacher.’ Just then the nurse brought Helen’s little sister into the
pump-house, and Helen spelled ‘baby’ and pointed to the nurse. All the
way back to the house she was highly excited, and learned the name of
every object she touched, so that in a few hours she had added thirty
new words to her vocabulary.”
The following day Miss Sullivan writes, “Helen got up this morning
like a radiant fairy. She has flitted from object to object, asking
the name of everything and kissing me for very gladness.” And four
days later, “Everything must have a name now.... She drops the signs
and pantomime she used before, so soon as she has words to supply
their place, and the acquirement of a new word affords her the
liveliest pleasure. And we notice that her face grows more expressive
each day.”[22]
This experience is a type of what happens more gradually to all of us:
it is through communication that we get our higher development. The
faces and conversation of our associates; books, letters, travel, arts,
and the like, by awakening thought and feeling and guiding them in
certain channels, supply the stimulus and framework for all our growth.
In the same way, if we take a larger view and consider the life of a
social group, we see that communication, including its organization
into literature, art, and institutions, is truly the outside or
visible structure of thought, as much cause as effect of the inside or
conscious life of men. All is one growth: the symbols, the traditions,
the institutions are projected from the mind, to be sure, but in the
very instant of their projection, and thereafter, they react upon it,
and in a sense control it, stimulating, developing, and fixing certain
thoughts at the expense of others to which no awakening suggestion
comes. By the aid of this structure the individual is a member not only
of a family, a class, and a state, but of a larger whole reaching back
to prehistoric men whose thought has gone to build it up. In this whole
he lives as in an element, drawing from it the materials of his growth
and adding to it whatever constructive thought he may express.
Thus the system of communication is a tool, a progressive invention,
whose improvements react upon mankind and alter the life of every
individual and institution. A study of these improvements is one of
the best ways by which to approach an understanding of the mental and
social changes that are bound up with them; because it gives a tangible
framework for our ideas—just as one who wished to grasp the organic
character of industry and commerce might well begin with a study of the
railway system and of the amount and kind of commodities it carries,
proceeding thence to the more abstract transactions of finance.
And when we come to the modern era, especially, we can understand
nothing rightly unless we perceive the manner in which the revolution
in communication has made a new world for us. So in the pages that
follow I shall aim to show what the growth of intercourse implies in
the way of social development, inquiring particularly into the effect
of recent changes.
FOOTNOTES:
[22] The Story of My Life, 316, 317.
CHAPTER VII
THE GROWTH OF COMMUNICATION
PRE-VERBAL COMMUNICATION—THE RISE OF SPEECH—ITS MENTAL AND SOCIAL
FUNCTION—THE FUNCTION OF WRITING—PRINTING AND THE MODERN WORLD—THE
NON-VERBAL ARTS.
The chief means of what we may call pre-verbal communication are the
expression of the face—especially of the mobile portions about the eyes
and mouth—the pitch, inflection, and emotional tone of the voice; and
the gestures of the head and limbs. All of these begin in involuntary
movements but are capable of becoming voluntary, and all are eagerly
practised and interpreted by children long before they learn to speak.
They are immediately joined to action and emotion: the inflections of
the voice, for instance, play upon the child’s feelings as directly as
music, and are interpreted partly by an instinctive sensibility. I have
heard a child seventeen months old using her voice so expressively,
though inarticulately, that it sounded, a little way off, as if she
were carrying on an animated conversation. And gesture, such as
reaching out the hand, bending forward, turning away the head, and the
like, springs directly from the ideas and feelings it represents.
The human face, “the shape and color of a mind and life,” is a kind
of epitome of society, and if one could only read all that is written
in the countenances of men as they pass he might find a great deal
of sociology in them. Hereditary bias, family nurture, the print
of the school, current opinion, contemporary institutions, all are
there, drawn with a very fine pencil. If one wishes to get a real
human insight into the times of Henry the Eighth, for example, he
can hardly do better than to study the portrait drawings of Holbein;
and so of other periods, including our own, whose traits would
appear conspicuously in a collection of portraits. Many people can
discriminate particular classes, as, for instance, clergymen, by their
expression, and not a few will tell with much accuracy what church
the latter belong to and whether they are of the lower rank or in
authority. Again there is a difference, indescribable, perhaps, yet
apparent, between the look of American and of English youths—still more
of girls—which reflects the differing social systems.
This sort of communication is, of course, involuntary. An artificial
mechanism of communication originates when man begins purposely to
reproduce his own instinctive motions and cries, or the sounds,
forms, and movements of the world about him, in order to recall the
ideas associated with them. All kinds of conventional communication
are believed to be rooted in these primitive imitations, which, by a
process not hard to imagine, extend and differentiate into gesture,
speech, writing, and the special symbols of the arts and sciences; so
that the whole exterior organization of thought refers back to these
beginnings.
We can only conjecture the life of man, or of his humanizing
progenitor, before speech was achieved; but we may suppose that facial
expression, inarticulate cries and songs,[23] and a variety of
imitative sounds and actions aroused sympathy, permitted the simpler
kinds of general ideas to be formed, and were the medium through
which tradition and convention had their earliest development. It is
probable that artificial gesture language was well organized before
speech had made much headway. Even without words life may have been
an active and continuous mental whole, not dependent for its unity
upon mere heredity, but bound together by some conscious community
in the simpler sorts of thought and feeling, and by the transmission
and accumulation of these through tradition. There was presumably
coöperation and instruction of a crude sort in which was the germ of
future institutions.
No one who has observed children will have any difficulty in
conjecturing the beginnings of speech, since nearly every child
starts in to invent a language for himself, and only desists when he
finds that there is one all ready-made for him. There are as many
natural words (if we may call them so) as there are familiar sounds
with definite associations, whether coming from human beings, from
animals, or from inanimate nature. These the child instinctively loves
to reproduce and communicate, at first in mere sport and sociability,
then, as occasion arises, with more definite meaning. This meaning is
easily extended by various sorts of association of ideas; the sounds
themselves are altered and combined in usage; and thus speech is well
begun.
Many humble inventors contribute to its growth, every man, possibly,
altering the heritage in proportion as he puts his individuality
into his speech. Variations of idea are preserved in words or other
symbols, and so stored up in a continuing whole, constantly growing
in bulk and diversity, which is, as we have seen, nothing less than
the outside or sensible embodiment of human thought, in which every
particular mind lives and grows, drawing from it the material of its
own life, and contributing to it whatever higher product it may make
out of that material.
A word is a vehicle, a boat floating down from the past, laden with
the thought of men we never saw; and in coming to understand it we
enter not only into the minds of our contemporaries, but into the
general mind of humanity continuous through time. The popular notion of
learning to speak is that the child first has the idea and then gets
from others a sound to use in communicating it; but a closer study
shows that this is hardly true even of the simplest ideas, and is
nearly the reverse of truth as regards developed thought. In that the
word usually goes before, leading and kindling the idea—we should not
have the latter if we did not have the word first. “This way,” says the
word, “is an interesting thought; come and find it.” And so we are led
on to rediscover old knowledge. Such words, for instance, as _good_,
_right_, _truth_, _love_, _home_, _justice_, _beauty_, _freedom_; are
powerful makers of what they stand for.
A mind without words would make only such feeble and uncertain progress
as a traveller set down in the midst of a wilderness where there were
no paths or conveyances and without even a compass. A mind with them
is like the same traveller in the midst of civilization, with beaten
roads and rapid vehicles ready to take him in any direction where men
have been before. As the traveller must pass over the ground in either
case, so the mind must pass through experience, but if it has language
it finds its experience foreseen, mapped out and interpreted by all the
wisdom of the past, so that it has not only its own experience but that
of the race—just as the modern traveller sees not only the original
country but the cities and plantations of men.
The principle that applies to words applies also to all structures
that are built of words, to literature and the manifold traditions
that it conveys. As the lines of Dante are “foot-paths for the thought
of Italy,” so the successful efforts of the mind in every field are
preserved in their symbols and become foot-paths by which other minds
reach the same point. And this includes feeling as well as definite
idea. It is almost the most wonderful thing about language that by
something intangible in its order and movement and in the selection and
collocation of words, it can transmit the very soul of a man, making
his page live when his definite ideas have ceased to have value. In
this way one gets from Sir Thomas Browne, let us say, not his conceits
and credulities, but his high and religious spirit, hovering, as it
were, over the page.
The achievement of speech is commonly and properly regarded as the
distinctive trait of man, as the gate by which he emerged from his
pre-human state. It means that, like Helen Keller, he has learned that
everything has, or may have, a name, and so has entered upon a life
of conscious fellowship in thought. It not only permitted the rise of
a more rational and human kind of thinking and feeling, but was also
the basis of the earliest definite institutions. A wider and fuller
unity of thought took place in every group where it appeared. Ideas
regarding the chief interests of primitive life—hunting, warfare,
marriage, feasting and the like—were defined, communicated and
extended. Public opinion no doubt began to arise within the tribe, and
crystallized into current sayings which served as rules of thought and
conduct; the festal chants, if they existed before, became articulate
and historical. And when any thought of special value was achieved in
the group, it did not perish, but was handed on by tradition and made
the basis of new gains. In this way primitive wisdom and rule were
perpetuated, enlarged and improved until, in connection with ceremonial
and other symbols, they became such institutions, of government,
marriage, religion and property as are found in every savage tribe.
Nor must we forget that this state of things reacted upon the natural
capacities of man, perhaps by the direct inheritance of acquired social
habits and aptitudes, certainly by the survival of those who, having
these, were more fitted than others to thrive in a social life. In this
way man, if he was human when speech began to be used, rapidly became
more so, and went on accumulating a social heritage.
So the study of speech reveals a truth which we may also reach in many
other ways, namely, that the growth of the individual mind is not a
separate growth, but rather a differentiation within the general mind.
Our personal life, so far as we can make out, has its sources partly in
congenital tendency, and partly in the stream of communication, both
of which flow from the corporate life of the race. The individual has
no better ground for thinking of himself as separate from humanity
than he has for thinking of the self he is to-day as separate from the
self he was yesterday; the continuity being no more certain in the one
case than in the other. If it be said that he is separate because he
feels separate, it may be answered that to the infant each moment is
separate, and that we know our personal life to be a whole only through
the growth of thought and memory. In the same way the sense of a larger
or social wholeness is perhaps merely a question of our growing into
more vivid and intelligent consciousness of a unity which is already
clear enough to reflective observation.
It is the social function of writing, by giving ideas a lasting record,
to make possible a more certain, continuous and diversified growth of
the human mind. It does for the race very much what it does for the
individual. When the student has a good thought he writes it down,
so that it may be recalled at will and made the starting-point for a
better thought in the same direction; and so mankind at large records
and cherishes its insights.
Until writing is achieved the accumulation of ideas depends upon oral
tradition, the capacity of which is measured by the interest and
memory of the people who transmit it. It must, therefore, confine
itself chiefly to ideas and sentiments for which there is a somewhat
general and constant demand, such as popular stories—like the Homeric
legends—chants, proverbs, maxims and the like. It is true that
tradition becomes more or less specialized in families and castes—as
we see, for instance, in the widespread existence of a hereditary
priesthood—but this specialization cannot be very elaborate or very
secure in its continuance. There can hardly be, without writing, any
science or any diversified literature. These require a means by which
important ideas can be passed on unimpaired to men distant in time
and space from their authors. We may safely pronounce, with Gibbon,
that “without some species of writing no people has ever preserved the
faithful annals of their history, ever made any considerable progress
in the abstract sciences, or ever possessed, in any tolerable degree of
perfection, the useful and agreeable arts of life.”[24]
Nor can stable and extended government be organized without it, for
such government requires a constitution of some sort, a definite and
permanent body of law and custom, embracing the wisdom of the past
regarding the maintenance of social order.
It is quite the same with religious systems. The historical religions
are based upon Scriptures, the essential part of which is the recorded
teaching of the founder and his immediate disciples, and without such
a record Christianity, Buddhism or Mohammedanism could never have
been more than a small and transient sect. There may well have been
men of religious genius among our illiterate forefathers, but it was
impossible that they should found enduring systems.
The whole structure and progress of modern life evidently rests upon
the preservation, in writing, of the achievements of the antique mind,
upon the records, especially, of Judea, Greece and Rome. To inquire
what we should have been without these would be like asking what we
should have been if our parents had not existed. Writing made history
possible, and the man of history with his complex institutions. It
enabled a rapid and secure enlargement of that human nature which had
previously been confined within small and unstable groups.
If writing, by giving thought permanence, brought in the earlier
civilization, printing, by giving it diffusion opened the doors of the
modern world.
Before its advent access to the records of the race was limited to a
learned class, who thus held a kind of monopoly of the traditions upon
which the social system rested. Throughout the earlier Middle Ages,
for example, the clergy, or that small portion of the clergy who were
educated, occupied this position in Europe, and their system was the
one animate and wide-reaching mental organization of the period. For
many centuries it was rare for a layman, of whatever rank, to know
how to sign his name. Through the Latin language, written and spoken,
which would apparently have perished had it not been for the Church,
the larger continuity and coöperation of the human mind was maintained.
Those who could read it had a common literature and a vague sense of
unity and brotherhood. Roman ideas were preserved, however imperfectly,
and an ideal Rome lived in the Papacy and the Empire. Education,
naturally, was controlled by the clergy, who were also intrusted with
political correspondence and the framing of laws. As is well known they
somewhat recast the traditions in their own interest, and were aided
by their control of the communicating medium in becoming the dominant
power in Europe.
Printing means democracy, because it brings knowledge within the reach
of the common people; and knowledge, in the long run, is sure to make
good its claim to power. It brings to the individual whatever part
in the heritage of ideas he is fit to receive. The world of thought,
and eventually the world of action, comes gradually under the rule
of a true aristocracy of intelligence and character, in place of an
artificial one created by exclusive opportunity.
Everywhere the spread of printing was followed by a general awakening
due to the unsettling suggestions which it scattered abroad. Political
and religious agitation, by no means unknown before, was immensely
stimulated, and has continued unabated to the present time. “The
whole of this movement,” says Mr. H. C. Lea, speaking of the liberal
agitations of the early sixteenth century, “had been rendered possible
by the invention of printing, which facilitated so enormously the
diffusion of intelligence, which enabled public opinion to form and
express itself, and which, by bringing into communication minds of
similar ways of thinking, afforded opportunity for combined action.”
“When, therefore, on October 31, 1517, Luther’s fateful theses were
hung on the church door at Wittenberg, they were, as he tells us, known
in a fortnight throughout Germany; and in a month they had reached Rome
and were being read in every school and convent in Europe—a result
manifestly impossible without the aid of the printing press.”[25]
The printed page is also the door by which the individual, in our own
time, enters the larger rooms of life. A good book, “the precious
life blood of a master spirit stored upon purpose to a life beyond
life,”[26] is almost always the channel through which uncommon minds
get incitement and aid to lift themselves into the higher thought that
other uncommon minds have created. “In study we hold converse with
the wise, in action usually with the foolish.”[27] While the mass of
mankind about us is ever commonplace, there is always, in our day, a
more select society not far away for one who craves it, and a man like
Abraham Lincoln, whose birth would have meant hopeless serfdom a few
centuries ago, may get from half a dozen books aspirations which lead
him out to authority and beneficence.
While spoken language, along with the writing and printing by which it
is preserved and disseminated, is the main current of communication,
there are from the start many side channels.
Thus among savage or barbarous peoples we everywhere find, beside
gesture language, the use of a multitude of other symbols, such as the
red arrow for war, the pipe of peace, signal fires, notched sticks,
knotted cords, totems, and, among nations more advanced in culture,
coats-of-arms, flags and an infinite diversity of symbolic ritual.
There is, indeed, a world of signs outside of language, most of which,
however, we may pass by, since its general nature is obvious enough.
The arts of painting, sculpture, music, and architecture, considered as
communication, have two somewhat different functions: First, as mere
picture or image writing, conveying ideas that could also be conveyed
(though with a difference) in words; and, second, as the vehicle of
peculiar phases of sentiment incommunicable in any other way. These two
were often, indeed usually, combined in the art of the past. In modern
times the former, because of the diffusion of literacy, has become of
secondary importance.
Of the picture-writing function the mosaics, in colors on a gold
ground, that cover the inner walls of St. Mark’s at Venice are a
familiar instance. They set forth in somewhat rude figures, helped
out by symbols, the whole system of Christian theology as it was then
understood. They were thus an illuminated book of sacred learning
through which the people entered into the religious tradition. The same
tradition is illustrated in the sculpture of the cathedrals of Chartres
and Rheims, together with much other matter—secular history, typified
by figures of the kings of France; moral philosophy, with virtues
and vices, rewards and punishments; and emblems of husbandry and
handicraft. Along with these sculptures went the pictured windows, the
sacred relics—which, as Gibbon says, “fixed and inflamed the devotion
of the faithful”[28]—the music, and the elaborate pageants and ritual;
all working together as one rich sign, in which was incarnated the
ideal life of the times.
A subtler function of the non-verbal arts is to communicate matter that
could not go by any other road, especially certain sorts of sentiment
which are thus perpetuated and diffused.
One of the simplest and most fruitful examples of this is the depiction
of human forms and faces which embody, as if by living presence, the
nobler feelings and aspirations of the time. Such works, in painting or
sculpture, remain as symbols by the aid of which like sentiments grow
up in the minds of whomsoever become familiar with them. Sentiment is
cumulative in human history in the same manner as thought, though less
definitely and surely, and Christian feeling, as it grew and flourished
in the Middle Ages, was fostered by painting as much, perhaps, as by
the Scriptures. And so Greek sculpture, from the time of the humanists
down through Winckelmann and Goethe to the present day, has been a
channel by which Greek sentiment has flowed into modern life.
This record of human feeling in expressive forms and faces, as
in the madonnas and saints of Raphael, is called by some critics
“illustration”; and they distinguish it from “decoration,” which
includes all those elements in a work of art which exist not to
transmit something else but for their own more immediate value,
such as beauty of color, form, composition and suggested movement.
This latter is communication also, appealing to vivid but otherwise
inarticulate phases of human instinct. Each art can convey a unique
kind of sentiment and has “its own peculiar and incommunicable sensuous
charm, its own special mode of reaching the imagination.” In a picture
the most characteristic thing is “that true pictorial quality ...
the inventive or creative handling of pure line and color, which, as
almost always in Dutch painting, as often also in the works of Titian
or Veronese, is quite independent of anything definitely poetical in
the subject it accompanies” in music “the musical charm—that essential
music, which presents no words, no matter of sentiment or thought,
separable from the special form in which it is conveyed to us.”[29] And
so with architecture, an art peculiarly close to social organization,
so that in many cases—as in the Place of Venice—the spirit of a social
system has been visibly raised up in stone.
It needs no argument, I suppose, to show that these arts are no
less essential to the growth of the human spirit than literature or
government.
FOOTNOTES:
[23] On the probability that song preceded speech, see Darwin, Descent
of Man, chap. 19.
[24] Decline and Fall, Milman-Smith edition, i, 354.
[25] The Cambridge Modern History, i, 684, 685.
[26] Milton, Areopagitica.
[27] Bacon, Antitheta on Studies.
[28] Decline and Fall, Milman-Smith edition, iii, 428.
[29] Walter Pater, Essay on the School of Giorgione.
CHAPTER VIII
MODERN COMMUNICATION: ENLARGEMENT AND ANIMATION
CHARACTER OF RECENT CHANGES—THEIR GENERAL EFFECT—THE CHANGE IN
THE UNITED STATES—ORGANIZED GOSSIP—PUBLIC OPINION, DEMOCRACY,
INTERNATIONALISM—THE VALUE OF DIFFUSION—ENLARGEMENT OF
FEELING—CONCLUSION.
The changes that have taken place since the beginning of the nineteenth
century are such as to constitute a new epoch in communication, and
in the whole system of society. They deserve, therefore, careful
consideration, not so much in their mechanical aspect, which is
familiar to every one, as in their operation upon the larger mind.
If one were to analyze the mechanism of intercourse, he might, perhaps,
distinguish four factors that mainly contribute to its efficiency,
namely:
Expressiveness, or the range of ideas and feelings it is competent to
carry.
Permanence of record, or the overcoming of time.
Swiftness, or the overcoming of space.
Diffusion, or access to all classes of men.
Now while gains have no doubt been made in expressiveness, as in the
enlargement of our vocabulary to embrace the ideas of modern science;
and even in permanence of record, for scientific and other special
purposes; yet certainly the long steps of recent times have been made
in the direction of swiftness and diffusion. For most purposes our
speech is no better than in the age of Elizabeth, if so good; but
what facility we have gained in the application of it! The cheapening
of printing, permitting an inundation of popular books, magazines
and newspapers, has been supplemented by the rise of the modern
postal system and the conquest of distance by railroads, telegraphs
and telephones. And along with these extensions of the spoken or
written word have come new arts of reproduction, such as photography,
photo-engraving, phonography and the like—of greater social import than
we realize—by which new kinds of impression from the visible or audible
world may be fixed and disseminated.
It is not too much to say that these changes are the basis, from a
mechanical standpoint, of nearly everything that is characteristic in
the psychology of modern life. In a general way they mean the expansion
of human nature, that is to say, of its power to express itself in
social wholes. They make it possible for society to be organized more
and more on the higher faculties of man, on intelligence and sympathy,
rather than on authority, caste, and routine. They mean freedom,
outlook, indefinite possibility. The public consciousness, instead
of being confined as regards its more active phases to local groups,
extends by even steps with that give-and-take of suggestions that the
new intercourse makes possible, until wide nations, and finally the
world itself, may be included in one lively mental whole.
The general character of this change is well expressed by the two
words _enlargement_ and _animation_. Social contacts are extended in
space and quickened in time, and in the same degree the mental unity
they imply becomes wider and more alert. The individual is broadened
by coming into relation with a larger and more various life, and he
is kept stirred up, sometimes to excess, by the multitude of changing
suggestions which this life brings to him.
From whatever point of view we study modern society to compare it
with the past or to forecast the future, we ought to keep at least a
subconsciousness of this radical change in mechanism, without allowing
for which nothing else can be understood.
In the United States, for instance, at the close of the eighteenth
century, public consciousness of any active kind was confined to small
localities. Travel was slow, uncomfortable and costly, and people
undertaking a considerable journey often made their wills beforehand.
The newspapers, appearing weekly in the larger towns, were entirely
lacking in what we should call news; and the number of letters sent
during a year in all the thirteen states was much less than that now
handled by the New York office in a single day. People are far more
alive to-day to what is going on in China, if it happens to interest
them, than they were then to events a hundred miles away. The isolation
of even large towns from the rest of the world, and the consequent
introversion of men’s minds upon local concerns, was something we can
hardly conceive. In the country “the environment of the farm was the
neighborhood; the environment of the village was the encircling farms
and the local tradition; ... few conventions assembled for discussion
and common action; educational centres did not radiate the shock of
a new intellectual life to every hamlet; federations and unions did
not bind men, near and remote, into that fellowship that makes one
composite type of many human sorts. It was an age of sects, intolerant
from lack of acquaintance.”[30]
The change to the present régime of railroads, telegraphs, daily
papers, telephones and the rest has involved a revolution in every
phase of life; in commerce, in politics, in education, even in mere
sociability and gossip—this revolution always consisting in an
enlargement and quickening of the kind of life in question.
Probably there is nothing in this new mechanism quite so pervasive and
characteristic as the daily newspaper, which is as vehemently praised
as it is abused, and in both cases with good reason. What a strange
practice it is, when you think of it, that a man should sit down to
his breakfast table and, instead of conversing with his wife, and
children, hold before his face a sort of screen on which is inscribed a
world-wide gossip!
The essential function of the newspaper is, of course, to serve as a
bulletin of important news and a medium for the interchange of ideas,
through the printing of interviews, letters, speeches and editorial
comment. In this way it is indispensable to the organization of the
public mind.
The bulk of its matter, however, is best described by the phrase
organized gossip. The sort of intercourse that people formerly carried
on at cross-road stores or over the back fence, has now attained the
dignity of print and an imposing system. That we absorb a flood of this
does not necessarily mean that our minds are degenerate, but merely
that we are gratifying an old appetite in a new way. Henry James speaks
with a severity natural to literary sensibility of “the ubiquitous
newspaper face, with its mere monstrosity and deformity of feature, and
the vast open mouth, adjusted as to the chatter of Bedlam, that flings
the flood-gates of vulgarity farther back [in America] than anywhere
else on earth.”[31] But after all is it any more vulgar than the older
kind of gossip? No doubt it seems worse for venturing to share with
literature the use of the printed word.
That the bulk of the contents of the newspaper is of the nature of
gossip may be seen by noting three traits which together seem to make
a fair definition of that word. It is copious, designed to occupy,
without exerting, the mind. It consists mostly of personalities and
appeals to superficial emotion. It is untrustworthy—except upon a few
matters of moment which the public are likely to follow up and verify.
These traits any one who is curious may substantiate by a study of his
own morning journal.
There is a better and a worse side to this enlargement of gossip.
On the former we may reckon the fact that it promotes a widespread
sociability and sense of community; we know that people all over the
country are laughing at the same jokes or thrilling with the same mild
excitement over the foot-ball game, and we absorb a conviction that
they are good fellows much like ourselves. It also tends powerfully,
through the fear of publicity, to enforce a popular, somewhat vulgar,
but sound and human standard of morality. On the other hand it fosters
superficiality and commonplace in every sphere of thought and feeling,
and is, of course, the antithesis of literature and of all high or
fine spiritual achievement. It stands for diffusion as opposed to
distinction.
In politics communication makes possible public opinion, which, when
organized, is democracy. The whole growth of this, and of the popular
education and enlightenment that go with it, is immediately dependent
upon the telegraph, the newspaper and the fast mail, for there can be
no popular mind upon questions of the day, over wide areas, except as
the people are promptly informed of such questions and are enabled to
exchange views regarding them.
Our government, under the Constitution, was not originally a democracy,
and was not intended to be so by the men that framed it. It was
expected to be a representative republic, the people choosing men
of character and wisdom, who would proceed to the capital, inform
themselves there upon current questions, and deliberate and decide
regarding them. That the people might think and act more directly was
not foreseen. The Constitution is not democratic in spirit, and, as Mr.
Bryce has noted,[32] might under different conditions have become the
basis of an aristocratic system.
That any system could have held even the original thirteen states in
firm union without the advent of modern communication is very doubtful.
Political philosophy, from Plato to Montesquieu, had taught that free
states must be small, and Frederick the Great is said to have ridiculed
the idea of one extending from Maine to Georgia. “A large empire,” says
Montesquieu, “supposes a despotic authority in the person who governs.
It is necessary that the quickness of the prince’s resolutions should
supply the distance of the places they are sent to.”[33]
Democracy has arisen here, as it seems to be arising everywhere in
the civilized world, not, chiefly, because of changes in the formal
constitution, but as the outcome of conditions which make it natural
for the people to have and to express a consciousness regarding
questions of the day. It is said by those who know China that while
that country was at war with Japan the majority of the Chinese were
unaware that a war was in progress. Such ignorance makes the sway of
public opinion impossible; and, conversely, it seems likely that no
state, having a vigorous people, can long escape that sway except by
repressing the interchange of thought. When the people have information
and discussion they will have a will, and this must sooner or later get
hold of the institutions of society.
One is often impressed with the thought that there ought to be some
wider name for the modern movement than democracy, some name which
should more distinctly suggest the enlargement and quickening of the
general mind, of which the formal rule of the people is only one among
many manifestations. The current of new life that is sweeping with
augmenting force through the older structures of society, now carrying
them away, now leaving them outwardly undisturbed, has no adequate name.
Popular education is an inseparable part of all this: the individual
must have at least those arts of reading and writing without which he
can hardly be a vital member of the new organism. And that further
development of education, rapidly becoming a conscious aim of modern
society, which strives to give to every person a special training in
preparation for whatever function he may have aptitude for, is also a
phase of the freer and more flexible organization of mental energy.
The same enlargement runs through all life, including fashion and
other trivial or fugitive kinds of intercourse. And the widest phase
of all, upon whose momentousness I need not dwell, is that rise of an
international consciousness, in literature, in science and, finally,
in politics, which holds out a trustworthy promise of the indefinite
enlargement of justice and amity.
This unification of life by a freer course of thought is not only
contemporaneous, overcoming space, but also historical, bringing the
past into the present, and making every notable achievement of the race
a possible factor in its current life—as when, by skilful reproduction
the work of a mediæval painter is brought home to people dwelling five
hundred years later on the other side of the globe. Our time is one of
“large discourse, looking before and after.”
There are remarkable possibilities in this diffusive vigor. Never,
certainly, were great masses of men so rapidly rising to higher levels
as now. There are the same facilities for disseminating improvement
in mind and manners as in material devices; and the new communication
has spread like morning light over the world, awakening, enlightening,
enlarging, and filling with expectation. Human nature desires the good,
when it once perceives it, and in all that is easily understood and
imitated great headway is making.
Nor is there, as I shall try to show later, any good reason to think
that the conditions are permanently unfavorable to the rise of special
and select types of excellence. The same facility of communication
which animates millions with the emulation of common models, also makes
it easy for more discriminating minds to unite in small groups. The
general fact is that human nature is set free; in time it will no doubt
justify its freedom.
The enlargement affects not only thought but feeling, favoring the
growth of a sense of common humanity, of moral unity, between nations,
races and classes. Among members of a communicating whole feeling
may not always be friendly, but it must be, in a sense, sympathetic,
involving some consciousness of the other’s point of view. Even the
animosities of modern nations are of a human and imaginative sort,
not the blind animal hostility of a more primitive age. They are
resentments, and resentment, as Charles Lamb says, is of the family of
love.
The relations between persons or communities that are without
mutual understanding are necessarily on a low plane. There may be
indifference, or a blind anger due to interference, or there may be
a good-natured tolerance; but there is no consciousness of a common
nature to warm up the kindly sentiments. A really human fellow-feeling
was anciently confined within the tribe, men outside not being felt as
members of a common whole. The alien was commonly treated as a more or
less useful or dangerous animal—destroyed, despoiled or enslaved. Even
in these days we care little about people whose life is not brought
home to us by some kind of sympathetic contact. We may read statistics
of the miserable life of the Italians and Jews in New York and Chicago;
of bad housing, sweatshops and tuberculosis; but we care little more
about them than we do about the sufferers from the Black Death, unless
their life is realized to us in some human way, either by personal
contact, or by pictures and imaginative description.
And we are getting this at the present time. The resources of modern
communication are used in stimulating and gratifying our interest in
every phase of human life. Russians, Japanese, Filipinos, fishermen,
miners, millionaires, criminals, tramps and opium-eaters are brought
home to us. The press well understands that nothing human is alien to
us if it is only made comprehensible.
With a mind enlarged and suppled by such training, the man of to-day
inclines to look for a common nature everywhere, and to demand that the
whole world shall be brought under the sway of common principles of
kindness and justice. He wants to see international strife allayed—in
such a way, however, as not to prevent the expansion of capable
races and the survival of better types; he wishes the friction of
classes reduced and each interest fairly treated—but without checking
individuality and enterprise. There was never so general an eagerness
that righteousness should prevail; the chief matter of dispute is upon
the principles under which it may be established.
The work of communication in enlarging human nature is partly
immediate, through facilitating contact, but even more it is indirect,
through favoring the increase of intelligence, the decline of
mechanical and arbitrary forms of organization, and the rise of a
more humane type of society. History may be regarded as a record of
the struggle of man to realize his aspirations through organization;
and the new communication is an efficient tool for this purpose.
Assuming that the human heart and conscience, restricted only by the
difficulties of organization, is the arbiter of what institutions
are to become, we may expect the facility of intercourse to be the
starting-point of an era of moral progress.
FOOTNOTES:
[30] W. L. Anderson, The Country Town, 209, 210.
[31] The Manners of American Women, Harper’s Bazar, May, 1907.
[32] The American Commonwealth, chap. 26.
[33] The Spirit of Laws, book viii, chap. 19.
CHAPTER IX
MODERN COMMUNICATION: INDIVIDUALITY
THE QUESTION—WHY COMMUNICATION SHOULD FOSTER INDIVIDUALITY—THE
CONTRARY OR DEAD-LEVEL THEORY—RECONCILIATION OF THESE VIEWS—THE
OUTLOOK AS REGARDS INDIVIDUALITY.
It is a question of utmost interest whether these changes do or do
not contribute to the independence and productivity of the individual
mind. Do they foster a self-reliant personality, capable at need of
pursuing high and rare aims, or have they rather a levelling tendency,
repressive of what is original and characteristic? There are in fact
opposite opinions regarding this matter, in support of either of which
numerous expressions by writers of some weight might be collected.
From one point of view it would appear that the new communication ought
to encourage individuality of all kinds; it makes it easier to get away
from a given environment and to find support in one more congenial.
The world has grown more various and at the same time more accessible,
so that one having a natural bent should be the more able to find
influences to nourish it. If he has a turn, say, for entomology, he
can readily, through journals, correspondence and meetings, get in
touch with a group of men similarly inclined, and with a congenial
tradition. And so with any sect of religion, or politics, or art,
or what not; if there are in the civilized world a few like-minded
people it is comparatively easy for them to get together in spirit and
encourage one another in their peculiarity.
It is a simple and recognized principle of development that an enlarged
life in the organism commonly involves greater differentiation in its
parts. That the social enlargement of recent times has in general
this character seems plain, and has been set forth in much detail
by some writers, notably by Herbert Spencer. Many, indeed, find the
characteristic evil of the new era in an extreme individuality, a
somewhat anarchic differentiation and working at cross purposes.
“Probably there was never any time,” says Professor Mackenzie, “in
which men tended to be so unintelligible to each other as they are now,
on account of the diversity of the objects with which they are engaged,
and of the points of view at which they stand.”[34]
On the other hand we have what we may call the dead-level theory, of
which De Tocqueville, in his Democracy in America, was apparently
the chief author. Modern conditions, according to this, break down
all limits to the spread of ideas and customs. Great populations
are brought into one mental whole, through which movements of
thought run by a contagion like that of the mob; and instead of
the individuality which was fostered by former obstacles, we have
a universal assimilation. Each locality, it is pointed out, had
formerly its peculiar accent and mode of dress; while now dialects
are disappearing, and almost the same fashions prevail throughout
the civilized world. This uniformity in externals is held to be only
the outward and visible sign of a corresponding levelling of ideas.
People, it is said, have a passion to be alike, which modern appliances
enable them to gratify. Already in the eighteenth century Dr. Johnson
complained that “commerce has left the people no singularities,”
and in our day many hold with John Burroughs that, “Constant
intercommunication, the friction of travel, of streets, of books, of
newspapers, make us all alike; we are, as it were, all pebbles upon the
same shore, washed by the same waves.”[35]
The key to this matter, in my judgment, is to perceive that there
are two kinds of individuality, one of isolation and one of choice,
and that modern conditions foster the latter while they efface the
former. They tend to make life rational and free instead of local and
accidental. They enlarge indefinitely the competition of ideas, and
whatever has owed its persistence merely to lack of comparison is
likely to go, while that which is really congenial to the choosing
mind will be all the more cherished and increased. Human nature
is enfranchised, and works on a larger scale as regards both its
conformities and its non-conformities.
Something of this may be seen in the contrast between town and country,
the latter having more of the individuality of isolation, the former
of choice. “The rural environment,” says Mr. R. L. Hartt, speaking of
country villages in New England, “is psychically extravagant. It tends
to extremes. A man carries himself out to his logical conclusions;
he becomes a concentrated essence of himself.”[36] I travelled some
years ago among the mountains of North Carolina, at that time wholly
unreached by modern industry and communication, and noticed that not
only was the dialect of the region as a whole distinct from that of
neighboring parts of the country, but that even adjoining valleys often
showed marked differences. Evidently this sort of local individuality,
characteristic of an illiterate people living on their own corn, pork
and neighborhood traditions, can hardly survive the new communication.
It must be said, however, that rural life has other conditions that
foster individuality in a more wholesome way than mere isolation,
and are a real advantage in the growth of character. Among these are
control over the immediate environment, the habit of face-to-face
struggle with nature, and comparative security of economic position.
All these contribute to the self-reliance upon which the farming people
justly pride themselves.
In the city we find an individuality less picturesque but perhaps more
functional. There is more facility for the formation of specialized
groups, and so for the fostering of special capacities. Notwithstanding
the din of communication and trade, the cities are, for this reason,
the chief seats of productive originality in art, science and letters.
The difference is analogous to that between the development of natural
species on islands or other isolated areas, and on a wide and
traversable continent. The former produces many quaint species, like
the kangaroos, which disappear when brought into contact with more
capable types; but the continent by no means brings about uniformity.
It engenders, rather, a complex organism of related species and
varieties, each of which is comparatively perfect in its special
way; and has become so through the very fact of a wider struggle for
existence.
So, easy communication of ideas favors differentiation of a rational
and functional sort, as distinguished from the random variations
fostered by isolation. And it must be remembered that any sort is
rational and functional that really commends itself to the human
spirit. Even revolt from an ascendant type is easier now than formerly,
because the rebel can fortify himself with the triumphant records of
the non-conformers of the past.
It is, then, probable that local peculiarity of speech and manner, and
other curious and involuntary sorts of individuality, will diminish.
And certainly a great deal is thus lost in the way of local color
and atmosphere, of the racy flavor of isolated personalities and
unconscious picturesqueness of social types. The diversities of dress,
language and culture, which were developed in Europe during the Middle
Ages, when each little barony was the channel of peculiar traditions,
can hardly reappear. Nor can we expect, in modern cities, the sort
of architectural individuality we find in those of Italy, built when
each village was a distinct political and social unit. Heine, speaking
of Scott, long ago referred to “the great pain caused by the loss of
national characteristics in consequence of the spread of the newer
culture—a pain which now quivers in the heart of all peoples.”
But the more vital individuality, the cultivation by special groups
of peculiar phases of knowledge, art or conduct, of anything under
the heavens in fact that a few people may agree to pursue, will
apparently be increased. Since uniformity is cheap and convenient,
we may expect it in all matters wherein men do not specially care to
assert themselves. We have it in dress and domestic architecture,
for instance, just so far as we are willing to take these things
ready-made; but when we begin to put ourselves into them we produce
something distinctive.
Even languages and national characteristics, if the people really
care about them, can be, and in fact are, preserved in spite of
political absorption and the assimilating power of communication.
There is nothing more notable in recent history than the persistence
of nationality, even when, as in Poland, it has lost its political
expression; and, as to languages, it is said that many, such as
Roumanian, Bulgarian, Servian, Finnish, Norsk and Flemish, have revived
and come into literary and popular use during the nineteenth century.
Mr. Lecky, in his “Democracy and Liberty”[37] declared that “there has
been in many forms a marked tendency to accentuate distinct national
and local types.”
To assume that a free concourse of ideas will produce uniformity is to
beg the whole question. If it be true that men have a natural diversity
of gifts, free intercourse should favor its development, especially
when we consider that strong instinct which causes man to take pleasure
in distinguishing himself, and to abhor to be lost in the crowd.
And, as regards the actual tendency of modern life, only an obstinate
_a priori_ reasoner will maintain with any confidence the decline of
individuality. Those who charge that we possess it in extravagant
excess have at least an equal show of reason.
Nor, from the standpoint of sentiment, does the modern expansion
of feeling and larger sense of unity tend necessarily to a loss of
individuality. There is no prospect that self-feeling and ambition will
be “lost in love’s great unity.”[38] On the contrary these sentiments
are fostered by freedom, and are rather guided than repressed by
sympathy.
In a truly organic life the individual is self-conscious and devoted to
his own work, but feels himself and that work as part of a large and
joyous whole. He is self-assertive, just because he is conscious of
being a thread in the great web of events, of serving effectually as a
member of a family, a state, of humanity, and of whatever greater whole
his faith may picture. If we have not yet an organic society in this
sense, we have at least the mechanical conditions that must underly it.
FOOTNOTES:
[34] Introduction to Social Philosophy, 110.
[35] Nature’s Way, Harper’s Magazine, July, 1904.
[36] A New England Hill Town. The Atlantic Monthly, April, 1899.
[37] I, 501.
[38] The concluding line of E. W. Sill’s poem, Dare You?
CHAPTER X
MODERN COMMUNICATION: SUPERFICIALITY AND STRAIN
STIMULATING EFFECT OF MODERN LIFE—SUPERFICIALITY—STRAIN—PATHOLOGICAL
EFFECTS.
The action of the new communication is essentially stimulating, and so
may, in some of its phases, be injurious. It costs the individual more
in the way of mental function to take a normal part in the new order of
things than it did in the old. Not only is his outlook broader, so that
he is incited to think and feel about a wider range of matters, but he
is required to be a more thoroughgoing specialist in the mastery of his
particular function; both extension and intension have grown. General
culture and technical training are alike more exigent than they used to
be, and their demands visibly increase from year to year, not only in
the schools but in life at large. The man who does not meet them falls
behind the procession, and becomes in some sense a failure: either
unable to make a living, or narrow and out of touch with generous
movements.
Fortunately, from this point of view, our mental functions are as a
rule rather sluggish, so that the spur of modern intercourse is for the
most part wholesome, awakening the mind, abating sensuality, and giving
men idea and purpose. Such ill effect as may be ascribed to it seems
to fall chiefly under the two heads, superficiality and strain, which
the reader will perceive to be another view of that enlargement and
animation discussed in the last chapter but one.
There is a rather general agreement among observers that, outside
of his specialty, the man of our somewhat hurried civilization is
apt to have an impatient, touch-and-go habit of mind as regards both
thought and feeling. We are trying to do many and various things, and
are driven to versatility and short cuts at some expense to truth
and depth. “The habit of inattention,” said De Tocqueville about
1835, “must be considered as the greatest defect of the democratic
character”[39]; and recently his judgment has been confirmed by
Ostrogorski, who thinks that deliverance from the bonds of space
and time has made the American a man of short views, wedded to the
present, accustomed to getting quick returns, and with no deep root
anywhere.[40] We have reduced _ennui_ considerably; but a moderate
_ennui_ is justly reckoned by Comte and others as one of the springs of
progress, and it is no unmixed good that we are too busy to be unhappy.
In this matter, as in so many others, we should discriminate, so far
as we can, between permanent conditions of modern life and what is due
merely to change, between democracy and confusion. There is nothing in
the nature of democracy to prevent its attaining, when transition has
somewhat abated, a diverse and stable organization of its own sort,
with great advantage to our spiritual composure and productivity.
In the meanwhile it is beyond doubt that the constant and varied
stimulus of a confused time makes sustained attention difficult.
Certainly our popular literature is written for those who run as they
read, and carries the principle of economy of attention beyond anything
previously imagined. And in feeling it seems to be true that we tend
toward a somewhat superficial kindliness and adaptability, rather than
sustained passion of any kind. Generally speaking, mind is spread out
very thin over our civilization; a good sort of mind, no doubt, but
quite thin.
All this may be counteracted in various ways, especially by
thoroughness in education, and is perhaps to be regarded as lack of
maturity rather than as incurable defect.
Mental strain, in spite of the alarming opinions sometimes expressed,
is by no means a general condition in modern society, nor likely
to become so; it is confined to a relatively small number, in whom
individual weakness, or unusual stress, or both, has rendered life too
much for the spirit. Yet this number includes a great part of those who
perform the more exacting intellectual functions in business and the
professions, as well as peculiarly weak, or sensitive, or unfortunate
individuals in all walks of life. In general there is an increase
of self-consciousness and choice; there is more opportunity, more
responsibility, more complexity, a greater burden upon intelligence,
will and character. The individual not only can but must deal with a
flood of urgent suggestions, or be swamped by them. “This age that
blots out life with question marks”[41] forces us to think and choose
whether we are ready or not.
Worse, probably, than anything in the way of work—though that is often
destructive—is the anxious insecurity in which our changing life keeps
a large part of the population, the well-to-do as well as the poor. And
an educated and imaginative people feels such anxieties more than one
deadened by ignorance. “In America,” said De Tocqueville, “I saw the
freest and most enlightened men placed in the happiest circumstances
which the world affords; it seemed to me as if a cloud habitually hung
upon their brows, and I thought them serious and almost sad, even in
their pleasures.”[42]
Not long ago Mr. H. D. Sedgwick contributed to a magazine a study of
what he called “The New American Type,”[43] based on an exhibition of
English and American portraits, some recent, some a century old. He
found that the more recent were conspicuously marked by the signs of
unrest and strain. Speaking of Mr. Sargent’s subjects he says, “The
obvious qualities in his portraits are disquiet, lack of equilibrium,
absence of principle, ... a mind unoccupied by the rightful heirs, as
if the home of principle and dogma had been transformed into an inn
for wayfarers. Sargent’s women are more marked than his men; women,
as physically more delicate, are the first to reveal the strain of
physical and psychical maladjustment. The thin spirit of life shivers
pathetically in its ‘fleshly dress’; in the intensity of its eagerness
it is all unconscious of its spiritual fidgeting on finding itself
astray—no path, no blazings, the old forgotten, the new not formed.”
The early Americans, he says, “were not limber minded men, not readily
agnostic, not nicely sceptical; they were ... eighteenth century
Englishmen.” Of Reynolds’ women he observes, “These ladies led lives
unvexed; natural affections, a few brief saws, a half-dozen principles,
kept their brows smooth, their cheeks ripe, their lips most wooable.”
People had “a stable physique and a well-ordered, logical, dogmatic
philosophy.” The older portraits “chant a chorus of praise for national
character, for class distinctions, for dogma and belief, for character,
for good manners, for honor, for contemplation, for vision to look upon
life as a whole, for appreciation that the world is to be enjoyed, for
freedom from democracy, for capacity in lighter mood to treat existence
as a comedy told by Goldoni.”[44]
This may or may not be dispassionately just, but it sets forth one side
of the case—a side the more pertinent for being unpopular—and suggests
a very real though intangible difference between the people of our time
and those of a century ago—one which all students must have felt. It is
what we feel in literature when we compare the people of Jane Austen
with those, let us say, of the author of The House of Mirth.
I do not propose to inquire how far the effects of strain may be seen
in an increase of certain distinctly pathological phenomena, such as
neurasthenia, the use of drugs, insanity and suicide. That it has an
important working in this way—difficult, however, to separate from that
of other factors—is generally conceded. In the growth of suicide we
seem to have a statistical demonstration of the destructive effect of
social stress at its worst; and of general paralysis, which is rapidly
increasing and has been called the disease of the century, we are told
that “it is the disease of excess, of vice, of overwork, of prolonged
worry; it is especially the disease of great urban centres, and its
existence usually seems to show that the organism has entered upon a
competitive race for which it is not fully equipped.”
FOOTNOTES:
[39] Democracy in America, vol. ii, book iii, chap. 15.
[40] Democracy and the Organization of Political Parties, ii, 579-588.
[41] J. R. Lowell, The Cathedral.
[42] Democracy in America, vol. ii, book ii, chap. 13.
[43] Since published in a book having this title.
[44] The Atlantic Monthly, April, 1904.
_PART III_
THE DEMOCRATIC MIND
CHAPTER XI
THE ENLARGEMENT OF CONSCIOUSNESS
NARROWNESS OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN TRIBAL SOCIETY—IMPORTANCE OF
FACE-TO-FACE ASSEMBLY—INDIVIDUALITY—SUBCONSCIOUS CHARACTER OF WIDER
RELATIONS—ENLARGEMENT OF CONSCIOUSNESS—IRREGULARITY IN GROWTH—BREADTH
OF MODERN CONSCIOUSNESS—DEMOCRACY.
In a life like that of the Teutonic tribes before they took on Roman
civilization, the social medium was small, limited for most purposes
to the family, clan or village group. Within this narrow circle there
was a vivid interchange of thought and feeling, a sphere of moral
unity, of sympathy, loyalty, honor and congenial intercourse. Here
precious traditions were cherished, and here also was the field for
an active public opinion, for suggestion and discussion, for leading
and following, for conformity and dissent. “In this kindly soil of the
family,” says Professor Gummere in his Germanic Origins, “flourished
such growth of sentiment as that rough life brought forth. Peace,
good-will, the sense of honor, loyalty to friend and kinsman, brotherly
affection, all were plants that found in the Germanic home that
congenial warmth they needed for their earliest stages of growth....
Originally the family or clan made a definite sphere or system of
life; outside of it the homeless man felt indeed that chaos had come
again.”[45]
When we say that public opinion is modern, we mean, of course, the
wider and more elaborate forms of it. On a smaller scale it has always
existed where people have had a chance to discuss and act upon matters
of common interest. Among our American Indians, for example, “Opinion
was a most potent factor in all tribes, and this would be largely
directed by those having popularity and power. Officers, in fact all
persons, became extremely well known in the small community of an
Amerind tribe. Every peculiarity of temperament was understood, and the
individual was respected or despised according to his predominating
characteristics. Those who were bold and fierce and full of strategy
were made war-chiefs, while those who possessed judgment and decision
were made civil chiefs or governors.”[46] The Germanic tribes were
accustomed to assemble in those village moots to which the historian
recurs with such reverence, where “the men from whom Englishmen were to
spring learned the worth of public opinion, of public discussion, the
worth of the agreement, the ‘common-sense’ to which discussion leads,
as of the laws which derive their force from being expressions of that
general conviction.”[47]
Discussion and public opinion of this simple sort, as every one knows,
takes place also among children wherever they mingle freely. Indeed, it
springs so directly from human nature, and is so difficult to suppress
even by the most inquisitorial methods, that we may assume it to exist
locally in all forms of society and at all periods of history. It grows
by looks and gestures where speech is forbidden, so that even in a
prison there is public opinion among the inmates. But in tribal life
these local groups contained all the vivid and conscious society there
was, the lack of means of record and of quick transmission making a
wider unity impracticable.
In the absence of indirect communication people had to come into
face-to-face contact in order to feel social excitement and rise to
the higher phases of consciousness. Hence games, feasts and public
assemblies of every sort meant more to the general life than they
do in our day. They were the occasions of exaltation, the theatre
for the display of eloquence—either in discussing questions of the
moment or recounting deeds of the past—and for the practice of those
rhythmic exercises that combined dancing, acting, poetry and music in
one comprehensive and communal art. Such assemblies are possibly more
ancient than human nature itself—since human nature implies a preceding
evolution of group life—and in some primitive form of them speech
itself is supposed by some to have been born. Just as children invent
words in the eagerness of play, and slang arises among gangs of boys on
the street, so the earliest men were perhaps incited to the invention
of language by a certain ecstasy and self-forgetting audacity, like
that of the poet, sprung from the excitement of festal meetings.[48]
Something of the spirit of these primitive assemblies is perhaps
reproduced in the social exaltation of those festal evenings around the
camp-fire which many of us can recall, with individual and group songs,
chants, “stunts” and the like; when there were not wanting original,
almost impromptu, compositions—celebrating notable deeds or satirizing
conspicuous individuals—which the common excitement generated in the
minds of one or more ingenious persons.
It is sometimes said that the individual counted for nothing in tribal
life, that the family or the clan was the unit of society, in which
all personalities were merged. From the standpoint of organization
there is much truth in this; that is the group of kindred was for many
purposes (political, economic, religious, etc.) a corporate unit,
acting as a whole and responsible as a whole to the rest of society;
so that punishment of wrong-doing, for example, would be exacted
from the group rather than from the particular offender. But taken
psychologically, to mean that there was a lack of self-assertion, the
idea is without foundation. On the contrary, the barbaric mind exalts
an aggressive and even extravagant individuality. Achilles is a fair
sample of its heroes, mighty in valor and prowess, but vain, arrogant
and resentful—what we should be apt to call an individualist.[49] The
men of the Niebelungenlied, of Beowulf, of Norse and Irish tales and of
our Indian legends are very much like him.
Consider, also, the personal initiative displayed in the formation of a
war-party among the Omahas, as described by Dorsey, and note how little
it differs from the way in which commercial and other enterprises are
started at the present day.
“It is generally a young man who decides to undertake an expedition
against the enemy. Having formed his plan he speaks thus to his friend:
‘My friend, as I wish to go on the war path, let us go. Let us boil
the food as for a feast.’ The friend having consented, the two are
the leaders ... if they can induce others to follow them. So they
find two young men whom they send as messengers to invite those whom
they name.... When all have assembled the planner of the expedition
addresses the company. ‘Ho! my friends, my friend and I have invited
you to a feast, because we wish to go on the war path.’ Then each one
who is willing to go replies thus: ‘Yes, my friend, I am willing.’ But
he who is unwilling replies, ‘My friend, I do not wish to go, I am
unwilling.’ Sometimes the host says, ‘Let us go by such a day. Prepare
yourselves.’”[50]
The whole proceeding reminds one also of the way games are initiated
among boys, the one who “gets it up” having the right to claim the best
position. No doubt the structure of some tribal societies permitted of
less initiative than others; but such differences exist at all stages
of culture.
Self-feeling, self-assertion and the general relation of the individual
to the group are much the same at all epochs, and there was never a
time since man became human when, as we sometimes read, “personality
emerged.” Change has taken place chiefly in the extent and character
of the group to which the individual appeals, and in the ways in which
he tries to distinguish himself. The Germanic tribesman, the mediæval
knight, the Renaissance artist or scholar and the modern captain of
industry are alike ambitious: it is the object that differs. There has,
indeed, been a development of personality in history, but it has been
correlative with that of the general life, and has brought no essential
change in the relation between the two.
In tribal life, then, since the conditions did not admit of wider
unification, public consciousness could be only local in scope.
Beyond its narrow range the cords which held life together were of a
subconscious character—heredity, of course, with its freight of mental
and social tendency; oral tradition, often vague and devious, and a
mass of custom that was revered without being understood. These wider
relations, not being surveyed and discussed, could not be the objects
of deliberate thought and will, but were accepted as part of the
necessary order of things, and usually ascribed to some divine source.
In this way language, laws, religion, forms of government, social
classes, traditional relations to other clans or tribes—all of which
we know to have been built up by the cumulative workings of the human
mind—were thought of as beyond the sphere of man’s control.
The wider unity existed, then as now; human development was continuous
in time and, after a blind fashion, coöperative among contemporaries.
The tools of life were progressively invented and spread by imitation
from tribe to tribe, the fittest always tending to survive; but only
the immediate details of such changes were matters of consciousness:
as processes they were beyond human cognizance. A man might adapt an
ancient custom to a fresh emergency, but he would be unaware that he
was shaping the growth of institutions.
There was even a tribal or national opinion, of a slow, subconscious
sort; a growth and consensus of ideas upon matters of general and
enduring interest, such as religion, marriage and government. And,
under unusual pressure, some more conscious unity of spirit might be
aroused, as among the Germans or Gauls confederated against Rome; but
this was likely to be transient.
The central fact of history, from a psychological point of view, may be
said to be the gradual enlargement of social consciousness and rational
coöperation. The mind constantly, though perhaps not regularly, extends
the sphere within which it makes its higher powers valid. Human nature,
possessed of ideals moulded in the family and the commune, is ever
striving, somewhat blindly for the most part, with those difficulties
of communication and organization which obstruct their realization on
a larger scale. Whether progress is general or not we need not now
inquire; it is certain that great gains have been made by the more
vigorous or fortunate races, and that these are regarded with emulation
and hope by many of the others.
Throughout modern European history, at least, there has been an evident
extension of the local areas within which communication and coöperation
prevail, and, on the whole, an advance in the quality of coöperation as
judged by an ideal moral unity. It has tended to become more free and
human, more adequately expressive of communal feeling.
Perhaps all apparent departures from this tendency may plausibly be
explained as cases of irregular growth. If we find that vast systems
of discipline, like the Roman Empire, have broken down, we find also
that these systems were of a low type, psychologically, that the best
features of them were after all preserved, and that the new systems
that arose, though perhaps less in extent, were on the whole a higher
and fuller expression of human nature.
In the later Empire, for example, it seems plain that social mechanism
(in its proper kind and measure one of the conditions of freedom) had
grown in such a way as to shackle the human mind. In order to achieve
and maintain an imperial reach of control, the state had gradually
been forced to take on a centralized bureaucratic structure, which
left the individual and the local group no sphere of self-reliant
development. Public spirit and political leadership were suppressed,
and the habit of organized self-expression died out, leaving the people
without group vitality and as helpless as children. They were not, in
general, cowards or voluptuaries—it seems that the decline of courage
and domestic morals has been exaggerated—but they had no trained and
effective public capacity. Society, as Professor Dill says, had been
elaborately and deliberately stereotyped.
The decline of vitality and initiative pervaded all spheres of life.
There were no inventions and little industrial or agricultural
progress of any kind. Literature degenerated into rhetoric: “In the
same manner,” says Longinus, “as some children always remain pigmies,
whose infant limbs have been too closely confined, thus our tender
minds, fettered by the prejudices and habits of a just servitude,
are unable to expand themselves, or to attain that well-proportioned
greatness which we admire in the ancients, who, living under a popular
government, wrote with the same freedom as they acted.”[51]
The growing states of the earlier world were confronted, whether they
knew it or not, with an irreconcilable opposition between freedom and
expansion. They might retain in small areas those simple and popular
institutions which nearly all the great peoples started with, and to
which they owed their vigor; or they could organize on a larger scale
a more mechanical unity. In the first case their careers were brief,
because they lacked the military force to ensure permanence in a
hostile world. In the latter they incurred, by the suppression of human
nature, that degeneracy which sooner or later overtook every great
state of antiquity.
In some such way as this we may, perhaps, dispose of the innumerable
instances which history shows of the failure of free organization—as in
the decay of ancient and mediæval city republics. Not only was their
freedom of an imperfect nature at the best, but they were too small
to hold their own in a world that was necessarily, for the most part,
autocratic or customary. Freedom, though in itself a principle of
strength, was on too little a scale to defend itself. “If a republic be
small,” said Montesquieu, “it is destroyed by a foreign force; if it
be large it is ruined by internal imperfection.”[52]
But how splendid, in literature, in art, and even in arms, were many
of these failures. How well did Athens, Florence and a hundred other
cities illustrate the intrinsic strength and fecundity of that free
principle to which modern conditions permit an indefinite expansion.
The present epoch, then, brings with it a larger and, potentially at
least, a higher and freer consciousness. In the individual aspect of
life this means that each one of us has, as a rule, a wider grasp of
situations, and is thus in a position to give a wider application to
his intelligence, sympathy and conscience. In proportion as he does
this he ceases to be a blind agent and becomes a rational member of the
whole.
Because of this more conscious relation to the larger wholes—nations,
institutions, tendencies—he takes a more vital and personal part in
them. His self-feeling attaches itself, as its nature is, to the object
of his free activity, and he tends to feel that “love of the maker for
his work,” that spiritual identification of the member with the whole,
which is the ideal of organization.
De Tocqueville found that in the United States there was no
proletariat. “That numerous and turbulent multitude does not exist, who
regarding the law as their natural enemy look upon it with fear and
distrust. It is impossible, on the contrary, not to perceive that all
classes ... are attached to it by a kind of parental affection.”[53]
And, notwithstanding a deep and well-grounded “social unrest,” this
remains essentially true at the present day, and should be true of all
real democracy. Where the state is directly and obviously founded upon
the thought of the people it is impossible to get up much fundamental
antagonism to it; the energies of discontent are absorbed by moderate
agitation.
The extension of reach and choice favors, in the long run, not only
political but every kind of opportunity and freedom. It opens to the
individual a more vital, self-determined and energetic part in all
phases of the whole.
At the same time, the limits of human faculty make it impossible that
any one of us should actually occupy all the field of thought thus open
to him. Although stimulated to greater activity than before, one must
constantly select and renounce; and most of his life will still be on
the plane of custom and mechanism. He is freer chiefly in that he can
survey the larger whole and choose in what relations he will express
himself.
Indeed, an ever-present danger of the new order is that one will not
select and renounce enough, that he will swallow more than he can
properly digest, and fail of the benefits of a thorough subconscious
assimilation. The more one studies current life, the more he is
inclined to look upon superficiality as its least tractable defect.
The new conditions demand also a thorough, yet diversified and
adaptable, system of training for the individual who is to share in
this freer and more exigent society. While democracy as a spirit is
spontaneous, only the fullest development of personal faculty can
make this spirit effectual on a great scale. Our confidence in our
instincts need not be shaken, but our application of them must be
enlarged and enlightened. We must be taught to do some one thing well,
and yet never allowed to lose our sense of the relation of that one
thing to the general endeavor.
The general or public phase of larger consciousness is what we call
Democracy. I mean by this primarily the organized sway of public
opinion. It works out also in a tendency to humanize the collective
life, to make institutions express the higher impulses of human nature,
instead of brutal or mechanical conditions. That which most inwardly
distinguishes modern life from ancient or mediæval is the conscious
power of the common people trying to effectuate their instincts. All
systems rest, in a sense, upon public opinion; but the peculiarity
of our time is that this opinion is more and more rational and
self-determining. It is not, as in the past, a mere reflection of
conditions believed to be inevitable, but seeks principles, finds these
principles in human nature, and is determined to conform life to them
or know why not. In this all earnest people, in their diverse ways, are
taking part.
We find, of course, that but little can be carried out on the
highest moral plane; the mind cannot attend to many things with that
concentration which achieves adequate expression, and the principle of
compensation is ever at work. If one thing is well done, others are
overlooked, so that we are constantly being caught and ground in our
own neglected mechanism.
On the whole, however, the larger mind involves a democratic and
humanistic trend in every phase of life. A right democracy is simply
the application on a large scale of principles which are universally
felt to be right as applied to a small group—principles of free
coöperation motived by a common spirit which each serves according
to his capacity. Most of what is characteristic of the time is
evidently of this nature; as, for instance, our sentiment of fair
play, our growing kindliness, our cult of womanhood, our respect for
hand labor, and our endeavor to organize society economically or on
“business principles.” And it is perhaps equally evident that the
ideas which these replace—of caste, of domination, of military glory,
of “conspicuous leisure”[54] and the like—sprang from a secondary
and artificial system, based on conditions which forbade a large
realization of primary ideals.
May we not say, speaking largely, that there has always been a
democratic tendency, whose advance has been conditioned by the
possibility, under actual conditions, of organizing popular thought and
will on a wide scale? Free coöperation is natural and human; it takes
place spontaneously among children on the playground, among settlers in
new countries, and among the most primitive sorts of men—everywhere, in
short, where the secondary and artificial discipline has not supplanted
it. The latter, including every sort of coercive or mechanical control
is, of course, natural in the larger sense, and functional in human
development; but there must ever be some resistance to it, which will
tend to become effective when the control ceases to be maintained
by the pressure of expediency. Accordingly we see that throughout
modern history, and especially during the past century, there has
been a progressive humanism, a striving to clear away lower forms of
coöperation no longer essential, and to substitute something congenial
to natural impulse.
Discussion regarding the comparative merits of monarchy, aristocracy
and democracy has come to be looked upon as scholastic. The world is
clearly democratizing; it is only a question of how fast the movement
can take place, and what, under various conditions, it really involves.
Democracy, instead of being a single and definite political type,
proves to be merely a principle of breadth in organization, naturally
prevalent wherever men have learned how to work it, under which life
will be at least as various in its forms as it was before.
It involves a change in the character of social discipline not
confined to politics, but as much at home in one sphere as another.
With facility of communication as its mechanical basis, it proceeds
inevitably to discuss and experiment with freer modes of action in
religion, industry, education, philanthropy and the family. The law
of the survival of the fittest will prevail in regard to social
institutions, as it has in the past, but the conditions of fitness have
undergone a change the implications of which we can but dimly foresee.
FOOTNOTES:
[45] Pages 169, 171.
[46] F. S. Dellenbaugh, The North Americans of Yesterday, 416.
[47] J. R. Green, History of the English People, i, 13.
[48] J. Donovan, The Festal Origin of Human Speech. Mind, October, 1891.
[49] “Jura neget sibi nata, nihil non arroget armis.”—Horace, Ars
Poet., 122.
[50] J. O. Dorsey, Omaha Sociology, 315, 316. A publication of the U.
S. Bureau of Ethnology.
[51] Quoted by Gibbon, Decline and Fall, Milman-Smith edition, i, 194,
195.
[52] The Spirit of Laws, book ix, chap. 1.
[53] Democracy in America, vol. i, chap. 24.
[54] One of many illuminating phrases introduced by T. V. Veblen in his
work on The Theory of the Leisure Class.
CHAPTER XII
THE THEORY OF PUBLIC OPINION
PUBLIC OPINION AS ORGANIZATION—AGREEMENT NOT ESSENTIAL—PUBLIC OPINION
VERSUS POPULAR IMPRESSION—PUBLIC THOUGHT NOT AN AVERAGE—A GROUP IS
CAPABLE OF EXPRESSION THROUGH ITS MOST COMPETENT MEMBERS—GENERAL AND
SPECIAL PUBLIC OPINION—THE SPHERE OF THE FORMER—OF THE LATTER—THE TWO
ARE UNITED IN PERSONALITY—HOW PUBLIC OPINION RULES—EFFECTIVE RULE
BASED ON MORAL UNITY.
Public opinion is no mere aggregate of separate individual judgments,
but an organization, a coöperative product of communication and
reciprocal influence. It may be as different from the sum of what the
individuals could have thought out in separation as a ship built by a
hundred men is from a hundred boats each built by one man.
A group “makes up its mind” in very much the same manner that the
individual makes up his. The latter must give time and attention to the
question, search his consciousness for pertinent ideas and sentiments,
and work them together into a whole, before he knows what his real
thought about it is. In the case of a nation the same thing must take
place, only on a larger scale. Each individual must make up his mind
as before, but in doing so he has to deal not only with what was
already in his thought or memory, but with fresh ideas that flow in
from others whose minds are also aroused. Every one who has any fact,
or thought, or feeling, which he thinks is unknown, or insufficiently
regarded, tries to impart it; and thus not only one mind but all minds
are searched for pertinent material, which is poured into the general
stream of thought for each one to use as he can. In this manner the
minds in a communicating group become a single organic whole. Their
unity is not one of identity, but of life and action, a crystallization
of diverse but related ideas.
It is not at all necessary that there should be agreement; the
essential thing is a certain ripeness and stability of thought
resulting from attention and discussion. There may be quite as much
difference of opinion as there was before, but the differences now
existing are comparatively intelligent and lasting. People know what
they really think about the matter, and what other people think.
Measures, platforms, candidates, creeds and other symbols have been
produced which serve to express and assist coöperation and to define
opposition. There has come to be a relatively complete organization
of thought, to which each individual or group contributes in its own
peculiar way.
Take, for instance, the state of opinion in the United States regarding
slavery at the outbreak of the civil war. No general agreement had been
reached; but the popular mind had become organized with reference to
the matter, which had been turned over and regarded from all points of
view, by all parts of the community, until a certain ripeness regarding
it had been reached; revealing in this case a radical conflict of
thought between the North and the South, and much local diversity in
both sections.
One who would understand public opinion should distinguish clearly
between a true or mature opinion and a popular impression. The former
requires earnest attention and discussion for a considerable time,
and when reached is significant, even if mistaken. It rarely exists
regarding matters of temporary interest, and current talk or print is
a most uncertain index of it. A popular impression, on the other hand,
is facile, shallow, transient, with that fickleness and fatuity that
used to be ascribed to the popular mind in general. It is analogous to
the unconsidered views and utterances of an individual, and the more
one studies it the less seriously he will take it. It may happen that
ninety-nine men in a hundred hold opinions to-day contrary to those
they will hold a month hence—partly because they have not yet searched
their own minds, partly because the few who have really significant and
well-grounded ideas have not had time to impress them upon the rest.
It is not unreasonable, then, to combine a very slight regard for most
of what passes as public opinion with much confidence in the soundness
of an aroused, mature, organic social judgment.
There is a widespread, but as I believe a fallacious, idea that the
public thought or action must in some way express the working of an
average or commonplace mind, must be some kind of a mean between the
higher and lower intelligences making up the group. It would be
more correct to say that it is representative, meaning by this that
the preponderant _feeling_ of the group seeks definite and effectual
expression through individuals specially competent to give it such
expression. Take for instance the activities of one of our colleges
in intercollegiate athletics or debates. What belongs to the group at
large is a vague desire to participate and excel in such competitions;
but in realizing itself this desire seeks as its agents the best
athletes or debaters that are to be found. A little common-sense and
observation will show that the expression of a group is nearly always
superior, for the purpose in hand, to the average capacity of its
members.
I do not mean morally superior, but simply more effective, in a
direction determined by the prevalent feeling. If a mob is in question,
the brutal nature, for the time-being ascendant, may act through
the most brutal men in the group; and in like manner a money-making
enterprise is apt to put forward the shrewdest agents it can find,
without regard for any moral qualities except fidelity to itself.
But if the life of the group is deliberate and sympathetic, its
expression may be morally high, on a level not merely of the average
member, but of the most competent, of the best. The average theory as
applied to public consciousness is wholly out of place. The public
mind may be on a lower plane than that of the individual thinking in
separation, or it may be on a higher, but is almost sure to be on a
different plane; and no inkling of its probable character can be had
by taking a mean. One mind in the right, whether on statesmanship,
science, morals, or what not, may raise all other minds to its own
point of view—because of the general capacity for recognition and
deference—just as through our aptitude for sudden rage or fear one mind
in the wrong may debase all the rest.
This is the way in which right social judgments are reached in matters
so beyond commonplace capacity as science, philosophy, and much of
literature and art. All good critics tell us that the judgment of
mankind, in the long run, is sure and sound. The world makes no
mistake as to Plato, though, as Emerson said, there are never enough
understanding readers alive to pay for an edition of his works. This,
to be sure, is a judgment of the few; and so, in a sense, are all finer
judgments. The point is that the many have the sense to adopt them.
And let us note that those collective judgments in literature, art
and science which have exalted Plato and Dante and Leonardo and
Michelangelo and Beethoven and Newton and Darwin, are democratic
judgments, in the sense that every man has been free to take a part in
proportion to his capacity, precisely as the citizen of a democracy is
free to take a part in politics. Wealth and station have occasionally
tried to dictate in these matters, but have failed.
It is natural for an organism to use its appropriate organ, and it
would be as reasonable to say that the capacity of the body for seeing
is found by taking an average of the visual power of the hand, nose,
liver, etc., along with that of the eye, as that the capacity of a
group for a special purpose is that of its average member. If a group
does not function through its most competent instruments, it is simply
because of imperfect organization.
It is strange that people who apply the average theory to democracy do
not see that if it were sound it must apply to all the social phenomena
of history, which is a record of the works of the collective mind.
Since the main difference between democracy and ancient or mediæval
systems is merely that the former is less restricted by time, space and
caste, is essentially an appeal to free human power as against what
is merely mechanical or conventional; by what magic is this appeal to
deprive us of our ancient privilege of acting through our efficient
individuals?
One who ponders these things will see that the principles of collective
expression are the same now as ever, and that the special difficulties
of our time arise partly from confusion, due to the pace of change, and
partly from the greater demands which a free system makes upon human
capacity. The question is, whether, in practice, democracy is capable
of the effective expression to which no very serious theoretical
obstacle can be discerned. It is a matter of doing a rather simple
thing on a vaster and more complicated scale than in the past.
Public opinion is no uniform thing, as we are apt to assume, but has
its multifarious differentiations. We may roughly distinguish a general
opinion, in which almost everybody in the community has a part, and
an infinite diversity of special or class opinions—of the family, the
club, the school-room, the party, the union, and so on.
And there is an equal diversity in the kind of thought with which the
public mind may be concerned: the content may be of almost any sort.
Thus there are group ideals, like the American ideal of indissoluble
unity among the states, the French ideal of national glory, or the
ideals of honor and good-breeding cherished in many families; and there
are group beliefs, regarding religion, trade, agriculture, marriage,
education and the like. Upon all matters in which the mind has, in
the past, taken a lively interest there are latent inclinations and
prepossessions, and when these are aroused and organized by discussion
they combine with other elements to form public opinion. Mr. Higginson,
recounting his experience in the Massachusetts legislature, speaks of
“certain vast and inscrutable undercurrents of prejudice ... which
could never be comprehended by academic minds, or even city-bred
minds,” but which were usually irresistible. They related to the rights
of towns, the public school system, the law of settlement, roads,
navigable streams, breadth of wheels, close time of fishing, etc.
“Every good debater in the House, and every one of its recognized legal
authorities, might be on one side, and yet the smallest contest with
one of these latent prejudices would land them in a minority.”[55]
This diversity merely reflects the complexity of organization, current
opinion and discussion being a pervasive activity, essential to
growth, that takes place throughout the system at large and in each
particular member. General opinion existing alone, without special
types of thought as in the various departments of science and art,
would indicate a low type of structure, more like a mob than a rational
society. It is upon these special types, and the individuals that
speak for them, that we rely for the guidance of general opinion (as,
for instance, we rely upon economists to teach us what to think about
the currency), and the absence of mature speciality involves weakness
and flatness of general achievement. This fault is often charged to
democracy, but it should rather be said that democracy is substituting
a free type of speciality, based upon choice, for the old type based
upon caste, and that whatever deficiency exists in this regard is due
chiefly to the confused conditions that accompany transition.
General public opinion has less scope than is commonly imagined. It
is true that with the new communication, the whole people, if they
are enough interested, may form public judgments even upon transient
questions. But it is not possible, nor indeed desirable, that they
should be enough interested in many questions to form such judgments.
A likeness of spirit and principle is essential to moral unity, but
as regards details differentiation is and should be the rule. The
work of the world is mostly of a special character, and it is quite
as important that a man should mind his own business—that is, his
own particular kind of general service—as that he should have public
spirit. Perhaps we may say that the main thing is to mind his private
business in a public spirit—always remembering that men who are in a
position to do so should make it their private business to attend to
public affairs. It is not indolence and routine, altogether, but also
an inevitable conflict of claims, that makes men slow to exert their
minds upon general questions, and underlies, the political maxim that
you cannot arouse public opinion upon more than one matter at a time.
It is better that the public, like the general-in-chief of an army,
should be relieved of details and free to concentrate its thought on
essential choices.
I have only a limited belief in the efficacy of the referendum and
similar devices for increased participation of the people at large
in the details of legislation. In so far as these facilitate the
formation and expression of public will upon matters to which the
public is prepared to give earnest and continuous attention, they
are serviceable; but if many questions are submitted, or those of a
technical character, the people become confused or indifferent, and the
real power falls into the hands of the few who manage the machinery.
The questions which can profitably be decided by this direct and
general judgment of the public are chiefly those of organic change or
readjustment, such, for instance, as the contemporary question of what
part the government is to take in relation to the consolidation of
industries. These the people must decide, since no lesser power will
be submitted to, but routine activities, in society as in individuals,
are carried on without arousing a general consciousness. The people are
also, as I shall shortly point out, peculiarly fit to make choice among
conspicuous personalities.
Specialists of all sorts—masons, soldiers, chemists, lawyers, bankers,
even statesmen and public officials—are ruled for the most part by the
opinion of their special group, and have little immediate dependence
upon the general public, which will not concern itself with them
so long as their work is not palpably inefficient or in some way
distasteful.
Yet special phases of thought are not really independent, but are to be
looked upon as the work of the public mind acting with a less general
consciousness—partly automatic like the action of the legs in walking.
They are still responsible to the general state of opinion; and it
is usually a general need of the special product, as shoes, banks,
education, medical aid and so on, that gives the special group its
pecuniary support and social standing. Moreover, the general interest
in a particular group is likely to become awakened and critical when
the function is disturbed, as with the building trades or the coal-mine
operators in case of a strike; or when it becomes peculiarly important,
as with the army in time of war. Then is the day of reckoning when the
specialist has to render an account of the talents entrusted to him.
The separateness of the special group is also limited by personality,
by the fact that the men who perform the specialty do not in other
matters think apart from the rest of the society, but, in so far as
it is a moral whole, share its general spirit and are the same men
who, all taken together, are the seat of public opinion. How far the
different departments of a man’s mind, corresponding to general and
special opinion, may be ruled by different principles, is a matter
of interest from the fact that every one of us is the theatre of a
conflict of moral standards arising in this way. It is evident by
general observation and confession that we usually accept without
much criticism the principles we become accustomed to in each sphere
of activity, whether consistent with one another or not. Yet this is
not rational, and there is and must ever be a striving of conscience
to redress such conflicts, which are really divisions in society
itself, and tend toward anarchy. It is an easy but weak defence of low
principles of conduct, in business, in politics, in war, in paying
taxes, to say that a special standard prevails in this sphere, and that
our behavior is justified by custom. We cannot wholly escape from the
customary, but conscience should require of ourselves and others an
honest effort to raise its standard, even at much sacrifice of lower
aims. Such efforts are the only source of betterment, and without them
society must deteriorate.
In other words, it is the chief and perhaps the only method of moral
and intellectual progress that the thought and sentiment pertaining to
the various activities should mingle in the mind, and that whatever
is higher or more rational in each should raise the standard of the
others. If one finds that as a business man he tends to be greedy and
narrow, he should call into that sphere his sentiments as a patriot,
a member of a family and a student, and he may enrich these latter
provinces by the system and shrewdness he learns in business. The
keeping of closed compartments is a principle of stagnation and decay.
The rule of public opinion, then, means for the most part a latent
authority which the public will exercise when sufficiently dissatisfied
with the specialist who is in immediate charge of a particular
function. It cannot extend to the immediate participation of the group
as a whole in the details of public business.
This principle holds good in the conduct of government as well as
elsewhere, experience showing that the politics of an intricate state
is always a specialty, closer to the public interest, perhaps, than
most specialties, but ordinarily controlled by those who, for whatever
reason, put their main energy into it. Professional politicians, in
this sense, are sure to win as against the amateur; and if politics is
badly managed the chief remedy is to raise the level of the profession.
De Tocqueville says that “the people reign in the American political
world as the Deity does in the universe. They are the cause and the aim
of all things; everything comes from them and is absorbed by them.”[56]
And we may add that, also like the Deity, they do things through agents
in whom the supposed attributes of their master are much obscured.
There are some who say we have no democracy, because much is done, in
government as elsewhere, in neglect or defiance of general sentiment.
But the same is true under any form of sovereignty; indeed, much more
true under monarchy or oligarchy than under our form. The rule of the
people is surely more real and pervasive than that of Louis XIV or
Henry VIII. No sovereign possesses completely its instruments, but
democracy perhaps does so more nearly than any other.
When an important function, such as government, or trade or education,
is not performed to the satisfaction of watchful consciences, the
remedy is somewhat as follows. A rather general moral sentiment
regarding the matter must be aroused by publishing the facts and
exposing their inconsistency with underlying standards of right.
This sentiment will effect little so long as it is merely general,
but if vigorous it rapidly begets organs through which to work. It is
the nature of such a sentiment to stimulate particular individuals
or groups to organize and effectuate it. The press has a motive to
exploit and increase it by vivid exposition of the state of affairs;
enthusiasm, seeking for an outlet, finds it in this direction; ambition
and even pecuniary interest are enlisted to gratify the demand.
Effective leadership thus arises, and organization, which thrives in
the warmth of public attention, is not long wanting. Civic leagues and
the like—supposing that it is a matter of politics—unite with trusted
leaders and the independent press to guide the voter in choosing
between honesty and corruption. The moral standard of the professional
group begins to rise: a few offenders are punished, many are alarmed,
and things which every one has been doing or conniving at are felt as
wrong. In a vigorous democracy like that of the United States, this
process is ever going on, on a great scale and in innumerable minor
groups: the public mind, like a careful farmer, moves about its domain,
hoeing weeds, mending fences and otherwise setting things to rights,
undeterred by the fact that the work will not stay done.
Such regeneration implies the existence of a real, though perhaps
latent, moral unity in the group whose standards are thus revived and
applied. It is, for instance, of untold advantage to all righteous
movements in the United States, that the nation traditionally exists
to the ends of justice, freedom and humanity. This tradition means
that there is already a noble and cherished ideal, no sincere appeal
to which is vain; and we could as well dispense with the wisdom of the
Constitution as with the sentiment of the Declaration of Independence.
On the same principle, it is a chief factor in the misgovernment of
our cities that they are mostly too new and heterogeneous to have an
established consciousness. As soon as the people feel their unity,
we may hopefully look for civic virtue and devotion, because these
things require a social medium in which to work. A man will not devote
himself, ordinarily, where there is no distinct and human whole to
devote himself to, no mind in which his devotion will be recognized and
valued. But to a vital and enduring group devotion is natural, and we
may expect that a self-conscious city, state, university or profession
will prove to be a theatre of the magnanimous virtues.
FOOTNOTES:
[55] On the Outskirts of Public Life, The Atlantic Monthly, Feb., 1898.
[56] Democracy in America, vol. i, chap. 4.
CHAPTER XIII
WHAT THE MASSES CONTRIBUTE
THE MASSES THE INITIATORS OF SENTIMENT—THEY LIVE IN THE CENTRAL
CURRENT OF EXPERIENCE—DISTINCTION OR PRIVILEGE APT TO CAUSE
ISOLATION—INSTITUTIONAL CHARACTER OF UPPER CLASSES—THE MASSES
SHREWD JUDGES OF PERSONS—THIS THE MAIN GROUND FOR EXPECTING
THAT THE PEOPLE WILL BE RIGHT IN THE LONG RUN—DEMOCRACY ALWAYS
REPRESENTATIVE—CONCLUSION.
The function of leaders in defining and organizing the confused
tendencies of the public mind is evident enough, but just what the
masses themselves contribute is perhaps not so apparent.[57] The
thought of the undistinguished many is, however, not less important,
not necessarily less original, than that of the conspicuous few; the
originality of the latter, just because it is more conspicuous, being
easy to overestimate. Leadership is only salient initiative; and among
the many there may well be increments of initiative which though not
salient are yet momentous as a whole.
The originality of the masses is to be found not so much in formulated
idea as in sentiment. In capacity to feel and to trust those sentiments
which it is the proper aim of social development to express, they are,
perhaps, commonly superior to the more distinguished or privileged
classes. The reason is that their experience usually keeps them closer
to the springs of human nature, and so more under the control of its
primary impulses.
Radical movements aiming to extend the application of higher sentiment
have generally been pushed on by the common people, rather than by
privileged orders, or by conspicuous leadership of any sort.[58]
This seems to be true of Christianity in all ages, and of the many
phases of modern democracy and enfranchisement. In American history,
particularly, both the revolution which gave us independence and the
civil war which abolished slavery and reunited the country, were more
generally and steadfastly supported by the masses than by people
of education or wealth. Mr. Higginson, writing on the Cowardice of
Culture,[59] asserts that at the opening of the Revolution the men of
wealth and standing who took the side of liberty were so few that they
could be counted, and that “there was never a period in our history,
since the American Nation was independent, when it would not have been
a calamity to have it controlled by its highly educated men alone.” And
in England also it was the masses who upheld abolition in the colonies
and sympathized with the North in the American struggle.
The common people, as a rule, live more in the central current of
human experience than men of wealth or distinction. Domestic morality,
religious sentiment, faith in man and God, loyalty to country and the
like, are the fruit of the human heart growing in homely conditions,
and they easily wither when these conditions are lost. To be one
among many, without individual pretension, is in one way a position
of security and grandeur. One stands, as it were, with the human
race at his back, sharing its claim on truth, justice and God. _Qui
quœrit habere privata amittit communia_;[60] the plain man has not
conspicuously gained private things, and should be all the richer in
things that are common, in faith and fellowship. Nothing, perhaps, is
healthy that isolates us from the common destiny of men, that is merely
appropriative and not functional, that is not such as all might rejoice
in if they understood it.
Miss Jane Addams has advanced a theory,[61] far from absurd, that the
confused and deprived masses of our cities, collected from all lands
by immigration, are likely to be the initiators of new and higher
ideals for our civilization. Since “ideals are born of situations,”
they are perhaps well situated for such a function by the almost
complete destruction, so far as they are concerned, of old traditions
and systems. In this promiscuous mingling of elements everything is
cancelled but human nature, and they are thrown back upon that for a
new start. They are an “unencumbered proletariat” notable for primary
faith and kindness, “simple people who carry in their hearts a desire
for mere goodness. They regularly deplete their scanty livelihood in
response to a primitive pity, and, independent of the religions they
have professed, of the wrongs they have suffered, and of the fixed
morality they have been taught, they have an unquenchable desire that
charity and simple justice shall regulate men’s relations.”[62]
Some tendency to isolation and spiritual impoverishment is likely
to go with any sort of distinction or privilege. Wealth, culture,
reputation, bring special gratifications. These foster special tastes,
and these in turn give rise to special ways of living and thinking
which imperceptibly separate one from common sympathy and put him in
a special class. If one has a good income, for instance, how natural
it is to spend it, and how naturally, also, that expenditure withdraws
one from familiar intercourse with people who have not a good income.
Success means possessions, and possessions are apt to imprison the
spirit.
It has always been held that worldly goods, which of course include
reputation as well as wealth, make the highest life of the mind
difficult if not impossible, devotional orders in nearly all
religions requiring personal poverty and lowliness as the condition
of edification. _Tantum homo impeditur et distrahitur, quantum sibi
res attrahit._[63] “Sloth or cowardice,” says a psychologist, “creep
in with every dollar or guinea we have to guard ... lives based on
having are less free than lives based on either doing or being.”[64]
“It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.” Not for
nothing have men of insight agreed upon such propositions as these.
Distinction, also, is apt to go with an exaggerated self-consciousness
little favorable to a natural and hearty participation in the deeper
currents of the general life. Ambition and the passion for difference
are good in their way, but like most good things they are bought at a
price, in this case a preoccupation with ideas that separate one from
immediate fellowship. It is right to have high and unusual aims and
activities, but hard to keep them free from pride, mistrust, gloom and
other vices of isolation. Only a very sane mind can carry distinction
and fellowship without spilling either.
In the social regard paid to wealth and standing we symbolize our vague
sense of the value of personal faculty working in the service of the
whole, but it requires an unusual purity and depth of social feeling
for the possessor of faculty not to be demoralized by this regard,
which is—perhaps necessarily—almost disassociated from definite and
cogent responsibility. I mean that the eminent usually get the credit
of virtue as it were _ex officio_, whether they really have it or not.
We find therefore that power, instead of being simply higher service,
is generally more or less corrupt or selfish, and those who are raised
up are so much the more cast down. At the best they make some sacrifice
of innocence to function; at the worst they destroy themselves and
debauch society.
Even vulgarity (by etymology the vice of the crowd) if we take it
to mean undisciplined selfishness and pretension, flourishes at
least as much among the prosperous as among the hand-working people.
Wealth which is not dominated by noble tradition or by rare personal
inspiration falls into vulgarity because it permits the inflation
of those crude impulses which are much kept down in the poor by the
discipline of hardship. Whatever is severely necessary can never be
vulgar, while only nobleness can prevent the superfluous from being
so. And a superficial, functionless education and refinement is nearly
as vulgar as uninspired wealth. So it has been remarked that when
artists paint our contemporary life they are apt to choose it as humble
as possible in order “to get down below the strata which vulgarity
permeates.”[65]
Moreover, conspicuous and successful persons are more likely than the
commonalty to be institutionized, to have sacrificed human nature to
speciality. To succeed in the hour one must be a man of the hour, and
must ordinarily harness his very soul to some sort of contemporary
activity which may after all be of no real worth. An upper class is
institutional in its very essence, since it is control of institutions
that makes it an upper class, and men can hardly keep this control
except as they put their hearts into it. Successful business men,
lawyers, politicians, clergymen, editors and the like are such through
identifying their minds, for better or worse, with the present
activities and ideals of commercial and other institutions. “Seldom
does the new conscience, when it seeks a teacher to declare to men what
is wrong, find him in the dignitaries of the church, the state, the
culture, that is. The higher the rank the closer the tie that binds
those to what is but ought not to be.”[66]
The humbler classes are somewhat less entangled in spirit. It is better
to have the hand subdued to what it works in than the soul; and the
mechanic who sells to the times only his ten hours a day of muscular
work is perhaps more free to think humanly the rest of the time than
his employer. He can also more easily keep the habit of simple look
and speech, since he does not have to learn to conceal his thoughts
in the same degree that the lawyer, the merchant and the statesman
do. Even among students I have observed, in the matter of openness of
countenance, a marked difference, on the whole, between the graduates
of an engineering school and those of a law school, very much in favor
of the former.[67] Again, the hand laborer is used to reckoning his
wages by the hour—so much time so much pay—and would feel dishonest
if he did anything else. But in the professions, and still more in
commerce and finance, there is, as a rule, no definite measure of
service, and men insensibly come to base their charges on their view of
what the other man will pay; thus perilously accustoming themselves to
exploit the wealth or weakness of others.
The life of special institutions is often transient in proportion to
its speciality, and it is only natural that commercial and professional
activity should deal largely with evanescent interests of little
dignity in themselves. The “demand” of the public which the merchant
has to meet, is in great part a thing of vanity, if not of degradation,
which it can hardly be edifying to supply. Indeed, many, if not most,
business men play their occupation as a game, rather than in a spirit
of service, and are widely infected by the fallacy that they are
justified in selling anything that the people will buy. Simple minds
are revolted by the lack of tangible human service in many of the
higher-paid occupations, and young men enter them for the pay alone
when their better impulses would lead them to prefer hand labor.
The sentiment of the people is most readily and successfully exercised
in their judgment of persons. Montesquieu, in discussing republican
government, advocated on this ground an almost universal manhood
suffrage in the choosing of representatives. “For,” says he, “though
few can tell the exact degree of men’s capacities, yet there are none
but are capable of knowing in general whether the person they choose
is better qualified than most of his neighbors.”[68] The plainest men
have an inbred shrewdness in judging human nature which makes them good
critics of persons even when impenetrable to ideas. This shrewdness is
fostered by a free society, in which every one has to make and hold
his own place among his fellows; and it is used with much effect in
politics and elsewhere as a guide to sound ideas.
Some years ago, for instance, occurred a national election in which the
main issue was whether silver should or should not be coined freely
at a rate much above its bullion value. Two facts were impressed upon
the observer of this campaign: first, the inability of most men, even
of education, to reason clearly on a somewhat abstract question lying
outside of their daily experience, and, second, the sound instinct
which all sorts of people showed in choosing sides through leadership.
The flow of nonsense on both parts was remarkable, but personality
was the determining influence. It was common to hear men say that they
should vote for or against the proposition because they did or did not
trust its conspicuous advocates; and it was evident that many were
controlled in this way who did not acknowledge it, even to themselves.
The general result was that the more conservative men were united on
one side, and the more radical and shifting elements on the other.
The real interest of the voter at our elections is usually in
personality. One likes or dislikes A, who is running for alderman, and
votes accordingly, without knowing or caring what he is likely to do if
elected. Or one opposes B, because he is believed to be in league with
the obnoxious C, and so on. It is next to impossible to get a large or
intelligent vote on an impersonal matter, such as the constitutional
amendments which, in most of our states, have to be submitted to the
people. The newspapers, reflecting the public taste, say little about
them, and the ordinary voter learns of them for the first time when he
comes to the polls. Only a measure which directly affects the interests
or passions of the people, like prohibition of the liquor traffic, will
call out a large vote.
On this shrewd judgment of persons the advocate of democracy chiefly
grounds his faith that the people will be right in the long run. The
old argument against him runs as follows: democracy is the rule of
the many; the many are incompetent to understand public questions;
hence democracy is the rule of incompetence. Thus Macaulay held that
institutions purely democratic must sooner or later destroy liberty or
civilization or both; and expected a day of spoliation in the United
States, “for with you the majority is the government and has the rich
absolutely at its mercy.”[69] More recent writers of standing have
taken the same view, like Lecky, who declares that the rule of the
majority is the rule of ignorance, since the poor and the ignorant are
the largest proportion of the population.[70]
To this our democrat will answer, “The many, whether rich or poor,
are incompetent to grasp the truth in its abstractness, but they
reach it through personal symbols, they feel their way by sympathy,
and their conclusions are at least as apt to be right as those of any
artificially selected class.” And he will perhaps turn to American
history, which is, on the whole, a fairly convincing demonstration that
the masses are not incapable of temperate and wise decision, even on
matters of much difficulty. That our antecedents and training have been
peculiarly fortunate must be conceded.
The crudely pessimistic view is superficial not only in underestimating
the masses and overestimating wealth—which is, in our times at least,
almost the only possible basis of a privileged class—but in failing to
understand the organic character of a mature public judgment. Is it not
a rather obvious fallacy to say that because the ignorant outnumber the
educated, therefore the rule of the majority is the rule of ignorance?
If fifty men consult together, forty of whom are ignorant regarding
the matter in hand and ten informed, will their conclusions necessarily
be those of ignorance? Evidently not, unless in some improbable manner
the forty separate from the ten and refuse to be guided by them.
Savages and gangs of boys on the street choose the most sagacious
to lead in counsel, and even pirates will put the best navigators
in charge of the ship. The natural thing, as we have seen, is for a
group to defer to its most competent members. Lecky would himself have
maintained this in the case of Parliament, and why should it not be
true of other groups? I see no reason why the rule of the majority
should be the rule of ignorance, unless they are not only ignorant but
fools; and I do not suppose the common people of any capable race are
that.
I was born and have lived nearly all my life in the shadow of an
institution of higher learning, a university, supported out of the
taxes of a democratic state and governed by a board elected directly
by the people. So far back as I can remember there have not been
wanting pessimists to say that the institution could not prosper on
such a basis. “What,” they said, “do the farmers know or care about the
university? how can we expect that they should support astronomy and
Sanscrit and the higher mathematics?” In fact there have been troublous
times, especially in the earlier days, but the higher learning has
steadily won its way in open discussion, and the university is now
far larger, higher in its standards, better supported and apparently
more firmly established in popular approval than ever before. What
more exacting test of the power of democracy to pursue and effectuate
high and rather abstract ideals could there well be than this? One who
lives in the midst of such facts cannot but discover something rather
doctrinaire in the views of Macaulay and Lecky.
If it be true that most people judge men rather than ideas, we may say
that democratic society is representative not only in politics but in
all its thought. Everywhere a few are allowed to think and act for the
rest, and the essence of democratic method is not in the direct choice
of the people in many matters, but in their retaining a conscious power
to change their representatives, or to exercise direct choice, when
they wish to do so. All tolerable government is representative, but
democracy is voluntarily so, and differs from oligarchy in preserving
the definite responsibility of the few to the many. It may even happen,
as in England, that a hereditary ruling class retains much of its
power by the consent of a democratized electorate, or, as in France,
that a conception of the state, generated under absolute monarchy, is
cherished under the rule of the people.
As for popular suffrage, it is a crude but practical device for
ascertaining the preponderant bent of opinion on a definite issue.
It is in a sense superficial, mechanical, almost absurd, when we
consider the difference in real significance among the units; but it is
simple, educative, and has that palpable sort of justice that allays
contention. No doubt spiritual weight is the great thing, but as there
is no accepted way to measure this, we count one man one vote, and
trust that spiritual differences will be expressed through persuasion.
There is, then, no essential conflict between democracy and
specialization in any sphere. It is true that as the vital unity of
a group becomes more conscious each member tends to feel a claim
on everything the group does. Thus the citizen not only wishes the
government—of the village, the state or the nation—to be an expression
of himself; but he wishes the same regarding the schools, manufactures,
trade, religion and the advance of knowledge. He desires all these
things to go on in the best way possible, so as to express to the
fullest that human nature that is in himself. And as a guaranty of
this he demands that they shall be conducted on an open principle,
which shall give control of them to the fittest individuals. Hating
all privilege not based on function, he desires power to suppress such
privilege when it becomes flagrant. And to make everything amenable,
directly or indirectly, to popular suffrage, seems to him a practical
step in this direction.
Something like this is in the mind of the plain man of our time; but he
is quite aware of his incompetence to carry on these varied activities
directly, either in government or elsewhere, and common-sense teaches
him to seek his end by a shrewd choice of representatives, and by
developing a system of open and just competition for all functions. The
picture of the democratic citizen as one who thinks he can do anything
as well as anybody is, of course, a caricature, and in the United
States, at least, there is a great and increasing respect for special
capacity, and a tendency to trust it as far as it deserves. If people
are sometimes sceptical of the specialist—in political economy let
us say—and inclined to prefer their own common-sense, it is perhaps
because they have had unfortunate experience with the former. On the
whole, our time is one of the “rise of the expert,” when, on account
of the rapid elaboration of nearly all activities, there is an ever
greater demand for trained capacity. Far from being undemocratic, this
is a phase of that effective organization of the public intelligence
which real democracy calls for. In short, as already suggested, to be
democratic, or even to be ignorant, is not necessarily to be a fool.
So in answer to the question, Just what do the undistinguished masses
of the people contribute to the general thought? we may say, They
contribute sentiment and common-sense, which gives momentum and general
direction to progress, and, as regards particulars, finds its way by a
shrewd choice of leaders. It is into the obscure and inarticulate sense
of the multitude that the man of genius looks in order to find those
vital tendencies whose utterance is his originality. As men in business
get rich by divining and supplying a potential want, so it is a great
part of all leadership to perceive and express what the people have
already felt.
FOOTNOTES:
[57] Some discussion of leadership will be found in Human Nature and
the Social Order, chaps. 8 and 9.
[58] So Mr. Bryce, The American Commonwealth, chap. 76. Some emphasis
should be given to the phrase “pushed on,” as distinguished from
“initiated.”
[59] In the Atlantic Monthly, Oct., 1905.
[60] Who seeks to have private things loses common things. Thomas à
Kempis, De Imitatione Christi, book iii, chap. 13, sec. 1.
[61] In her book, Newer Ideals of Peace.
[62] Newer Ideals of Peace, chap. 1.
[63] De Imitatione Christi, book ii, chap. 1, sec. 7.
[64] William James, Varieties of Religious Experience, 319.
[65] P. G. Hamerton, Thoughts About Art, 222.
[66] Henry D. Lloyd, Man the Social Creator, 101.
[67] I mean merely that the law graduates look sophisticated—not
dishonest. They have learned to use voice and facial expression as
weapons of controversy.
[68] The Spirit of Laws, book xi, chap. 6.
[69] From a letter written to an American correspondent in 1857 and
printed in the appendix to Trevelyan’s Macaulay.
[70] Democracy and Liberty, vol. i, chap. 1, page 25 and _passim_. Some
of Lecky’s expressions, however, are more favorable to democracy.
CHAPTER XIV
DEMOCRACY AND CROWD EXCITEMENT
THE CROWD-THEORY OF MODERN LIFE—THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CROWDS—MODERN
CONDITIONS FAVOR PSYCHOLOGICAL CONTAGION—DEMOCRACY A TRAINING IN
SELF-CONTROL—THE CROWD NOT ALWAYS IN THE WRONG—CONCLUSION; THE CASE OF
FRANCE.
Certain writers, impressed with the rise of vast democracies within
which space is almost eliminated by ease of communication, hold that we
are falling under the rule of Crowds, that is to say, of bodies of men
subject by their proximity to waves of impulsive sentiment and action,
quite like multitudes in physical contiguity. A crowd is well known to
be emotional, irrational and suppressive of individuality: democracy,
being the rule of the crowd, will show the same traits.
The psychology of crowds has been treated at length by Sighele,[71] Le
Bon[72] and other authors who, having made a specialty of the man in
the throng, are perhaps somewhat inclined to exaggerate the degree
in which he departs from ordinary personality. The crowd mind is
not, as is sometimes said, a quite different thing from that of the
individual (unless by individual is meant the higher self), but is
merely a collective mind of a low order which stimulates and unifies
the cruder impulses of its members. The men are there but they “descend
to meet.” The loss of rational control and liability to be stampeded
which are its main traits are no greater than attend almost any state
of excitement—the anger, fear, love and the like, of the man not in the
crowd.
And the intimidating effect of a throng on the individual—the
stage-fright, let us say, of an inexperienced speaker—is nothing
unique, but closely resembles that which we have all felt on first
approaching an imposing person; seeming to spring from that vague
dread of unknown power which pervades all conscious life. And like the
latter, it readily wears off, so that the practised orator is never
more self-possessed than with the crowd before him.
The peculiarity of the crowd-mind is mainly in the readiness with which
any communicable feeling is spread and augmented. Just as a heap of
firebrands will blaze when one or two alone will chill and go out, so
the units of a crowd “inflame each other by mutual sympathy and mutual
consciousness of it.”[73] This is much facilitated by the circumstance
that habitual activities are usually in abeyance, the man in a throng
being like one fallen overboard in that he is removed from his ordinary
surroundings and plunged into a strange and alarming element. At once
excited and intimidated, he readily takes on a suggested emotion—as of
panic, anger or self-devotion—and proceeds to reckless action.
It must be admitted that modern conditions enable such contagion to
work upon a larger scale than ever before, so that a wave of feeling
now passes through the people, by the aid of the newspaper, very
much as if they were physically a crowd—like the wave of resentment,
for instance, that swept over America when the battle-ship Maine was
destroyed in Havana harbor. The popular excitement over athletic
contests is a familiar example. During the foot-ball season the emotion
of the crowd actually present at a famous game is diffused throughout
the country by prompt and ingenious devices that depict the progress
of the play; and, indeed, it is just to get into this excitement, and
out of themselves and the humdrum of routine, that thousands of people,
most of whom know next to nothing of the game, read the newspapers and
stand about the bulletin boards. And when a war breaks out, the people
read the papers in quite the same spirit that the Roman populace went
to the arena, not so much from any depraved taste for blood, as to be
in the thrill. Even the so-called “individualism” of our time, and the
unresting pursuit of “business,” are in great part due to a contagion
of the crowd. People become excited by the game and want to be in it,
whether they have any definite object or not; and once in they think
they must keep up the pace or go under.
Is democracy, then, the rule of the crowd, and is there a tendency in
modern times toward the subjection of society to an irrational and
degenerate phase of the mind? This question, like others relating to
the trend of modern life, looks differently according to the points
of view from which it is approached. In general we may say that the
very changes which are drawing modern populations together into denser
wholes bring also a discipline in organization and self-control which
should remove them further and further from the mob state.
It is agreed by writers on the crowd that men are little likely to
be stampeded in matters regarding which they have a trained habit of
thought—as a fireman, for instance, will be apt to keep his head when
the fire-alarm sounds. And it is just the absence of this that is the
mark of a crowd, which is not made by mere numbers and contiguity,
but by group excitability arising from lack of stable organization. A
veteran army is not a crowd, however numerous and concentrated; and no
more perhaps is a veteran democracy, though it number twenty million
voters.
A healthy democracy is indeed a training in judgment and self-control
as applied to political action; and just as a fireman is at home on
trembling ladders and amidst choking fumes, so the free citizen learns
to keep his head amid the contending passions and opinions of a “fierce
democratie.” Having passed safely through many disturbances, he has
acquired a confidence in cool judgment and in the underlying stability
of things impossible to men who, living under a stricter control,
have had no such education. He knows well how to discount superficial
sentiment and “the spawn of the press on the gossip of the hour.” It
is, then, the nature of ordered freedom to train veterans of politics,
secure against the wild impulses of a rabble—such as made havoc in
Paris at the close of the Franco-Prussian war—and in modern times,
when power cannot be kept away from the people, such a training is the
main guaranty of social stability. Is it not apparent to judicious
observers that our tough-fibred, loose-jointed society takes agitation
more safely than the more rigid structures of Europe?
Nor is it merely in politics that this is true, for it is the whole
tendency of a free system to train men to stand on their own feet and
resist the rush. In a fixed order, with little opening for initiative
or differentiated development, they scarcely realize themselves as
distinct and self-directing individuals, and from them one may expect
the traits of Le Bon’s _foules_; hardly from the shrewd farmers and
mechanics of American democracy.
It looks at first sight as if, because of their dense humanity, the
great cities in which the majority of the population are apparently to
live must tend to a mob like state of mind; but except in so far as
cities attract the worse elements of the people this is probably not
the case. Mob phenomena generally come from crowd excitement ensuing
upon a sluggish habit of life and serving as an outlet to the passions
which such a life stores up. We find the mob and the mob-like religious
revival in the back counties rather than among the cheerful and
animated people that throng the open places of New York or Chicago.
Moreover, it is hardly true that “the multitude is always in the
wrong”;[74] and conclusions may be no less sound and vital for
being reached under a certain exaltation of popular enthusiasm. The
individual engaged in private affairs and without the thrill of the
common life is not more apt to be at the height of his mental being
than the man in the crowd. A mingling of these influences seems to
produce the best results, and the highest rationality, while it
involves much plodding thought in its preparation, is likely to come to
definite consciousness and expression in moments of some excitement.
As it is the common experience of artists, poets and saints that their
best achievements are the outcome of long brooding culminating in a
kind of ecstasy, so the clearest notes of democracy may be struck in
times of exaltation like that which, in the Northern United States,
followed the attack on Fort Sumter. The impulsiveness which marks
popular feeling may express some brutal or trivial phase of human
nature, or some profound moral intuition, the only definite test being
the persistence of the sentiment which thus comes to light; and if it
proves to have the lasting warrant of the general conscience it may be
one of those voices of the people in which posterity will discover the
voice of God.
The view that the crowd is irrational and degenerate is characteristic
of an intricate society where reading has largely taken the place
of assembly as a stimulus to thought. In primitive times the social
excitement of religious and other festivals represented the higher
life; as it still does in backwoods communities, and to sluggish
temperaments everywhere. Even in the towns our higher sentiments are
largely formed in social meetings of one sort or another, accompanied
by music, acting, dancing or speech-making, which draw one out of the
more solitary currents of his thought and bring him into livelier unity
with his fellows.
There is really no solid basis in fact or theory for the view
that established democracy is the rule of an irresponsible crowd.
If not true of America, it fails as a general principle; and no
authoritative observer has found it to be the case here. Those who
hold the crowd-theory seem to be chiefly writers, whether French or
not, who generalize from the history of France. Without attempting
any discussion of this, I may suggest one or two points that we are
perhaps apt to overlook. It is, for one thing, by no means clear that
French democracy has shown itself to lack the power of self-control
and deliberate progress. Its difficulties—the presence of ancient
class divisions, of inevitable militarism, and the like—have been
immeasurably greater than ours, and its spirit one with which we do not
readily sympathize. France, I suppose, is little understood in England
or the United States, and we probably get our views too much from a
school of French writers whose zeal to correct her faults may tend to
exaggerate them. The more notorious excesses of the French or Parisian
populace—such as are real and not a fiction of hostile critics—seem to
have sprung from that exercise of power without training inevitable
in a country where democracy had to come by revolution. And, again,
a certain tendency to act in masses, and lack of vigorous local and
private initiative, which appears to characterize France, is much older
than the Revolution, and seems due partly to race traits and partly to
such historical conditions as the centralized structure inherited from
absolute monarchy.
FOOTNOTES:
[71] Scipio Sighele, La folla delinquente. French translation La foule
criminelle.
[72] Gustave Le Bon, Psychologie des foules. English translation The
Crowd.
The whole subject, including the question of “prophylactics” against
the mob-mind, is well discussed in Professor E. A. Ross’s Social
Psychology.
[73] Whately in his note to Bacon’s essay on Discourse.
[74] Attributed to the Earl of Roscommon. See Bartlett’s Familiar
Quotations.
Sir Thomas Browne characteristically describes the multitude as “that
numerous piece of monstrosity, which, taken asunder, seem men, and the
reasonable creatures of God, but confused together, make but one great
beast, and a monstrosity more prodigious than Hydra.” Religio Medici,
part ii, sec. 1. This is the very man that urged the burning of witches
after the multitude was ready to give it up.
CHAPTER XV
DEMOCRACY AND DISTINCTION
THE PROBLEM—DEMOCRACY SHOULD BE DISTINGUISHED FROM
TRANSITION—THE DEAD-LEVEL THEORY OF DEMOCRACY—CONFUSION AND ITS
EFFECTS—“INDIVIDUALISM” MAY NOT BE FAVORABLE TO DISTINGUISHED
INDIVIDUALITY—CONTEMPORARY UNIFORMITY—RELATIVE ADVANTAGES OF AMERICA
AND EUROPE—HASTE, SUPERFICIALITY, STRAIN—SPIRITUAL ECONOMY OF A
SETTLED ORDER—COMMERCIALISM—ZEAL FOR DIFFUSION—CONCLUSION.
What shall we say of the democratic trend of the modern world as
it affects the finer sort of intellectual achievement? While the
conscious sway of the masses seems not uncongenial to the more popular
and obvious kinds of eminence, as of statesmen, inventors, soldiers,
financiers and the like, there are many who believe it to be hostile
to distinction in literature, art or science. Is there hope for this
also, or must we be content to offset the dearth of greatness by the
abundance of mediocrity?
This, I take it, is a matter for _a priori_ psychological reasoning
rather than for close induction from fact. The present democratic
movement is so different from anything in the past that historical
comparison of any large sort is nearly or quite worthless. And,
moreover, it is so bound up with other conditions which are not
essential to it and may well prove transient, that even contemporary
fact gives us very little secure guidance. All that is really
practicable is a survey of the broad principles at work and a rough
attempt to forecast how they may work out. An inquiry of this sort
seems to me to lead to conclusions somewhat as follows.
First, there is, I believe, no sound reason for thinking that the
democratic spirit or organization is in its essential nature hostile to
distinguished production. Indeed, one who holds that the opposite is
the case, while he will not be able to silence the pessimist, will find
little in fact or theory to shake his own faith.
Second, although democracy itself is not hostile, so far as we can
make out its nature by general reasoning, there is much that is so in
the present state of thought, both in the world at large and, more
particularly, in the United States.
In this, as in all discussions regarding contemporary tendency, we
need to discriminate between democracy and transition. At present the
two go together because democracy is new; but there is no reason in
the nature of things why they should remain together. As popular rule
becomes established it proves capable of developing a stability, even
a rigidity, of its own; and it is already apparent that the United
States, for instance, just because democracy has had its way there, is
less liable to sudden transitions than perhaps any other of the great
nations.
It is true that democracy involves some elements of permanent
unrest. Thus, by demanding open opportunity and resisting hereditary
stratification, it will probably maintain a competition of persons more
general, and as regards personal status more unsettling, than anything
the world has been used to in the past. But personal competition
alone is the cause of only a small part of the stress and disorder
of our time; much more being due to general changes in the social
system, particularly in industry, which we may describe as transition.
And moreover, competition itself is in a specially disordered or
transitional state at present, and will be less disquieting when a more
settled state of society permits it to be carried on under established
rules of justice, and when a discriminating education shall do a large
part of its work. In short, democracy is not necessarily confusion, and
we shall find reason to think that it is the latter, chiefly, that is
opposed to distinction.
The view that popular rule is in its nature unsuited to foster genius
rests chiefly on the dead-level theory. Equality not distinction is
said to be the passion of the masses, diffusion not concentration.
Everything moves on a vast and vaster scale: the facility of
intercourse is melting the world into one fluid whole in which the
single individual is more and more submerged. The era of salient
personalities is passing away, and the principle of equality, which
ensures the elevation of men in general, is fatal to particular
greatness. “In modern society,” said De Tocqueville, the chief begetter
of this doctrine, “everything threatens to become so much alike that
the peculiar characteristics of each individual will soon be entirely
lost in the general aspect of the world.”[75] Shall we agree with this
or maintain with Plato that a democracy will have the greatest variety
of human nature?[76]
Perhaps the most plausible basis for this theory is the levelling
effect ascribed by many to the facilities for communication that have
grown up so surprisingly within the past century. In a former chapter
I have said much upon this matter, holding that we must distinguish
between the individuality of choice and that of isolation, and giving
reasons why the modern facility of intercourse should be favorable to
the former.
To this we may add that the mere fact of popular rule has no inevitable
connection, either friendly or hostile, with variety and vigor of
individuality. If France is somewhat lacking in these, it is not
because she is democratic, but because of the race traits of her people
and her peculiar antecedents; if America abounds in a certain kind of
individuality, it is chiefly because she inherited it from England and
developed it in a frontier life. In either case democracy, in the sense
of popular government, is a secondary matter.
Certainly, America is a rather convincing proof that democracy does
not necessarily suppress salient personality. So far as individuality
of spirit is concerned, our life leaves little to be desired, and no
trait impresses itself more than this upon observers from the continent
of Europe. “All things grow clear in the United States,” says Paul
Bourget, “when one understands them as an immense act of faith in
the social beneficence of individual energy left to itself.”[77] The
“individualism” of our social system is a commonplace of contemporary
writers. Nowhere else, not even in England, I suppose, is there more
respect for non-conformity or more disposition to assert it. In
our intensely competitive life men learn to value character above
similarity, and one who has character may hold what opinions he
pleases. Personality, as Mr. Brownell points out in contrasting the
Americans with the French, is the one thing of universal interest
here: our conversation, our newspapers, our elections are dominated
by it, and our great commercial transactions are largely a struggle
for supremacy among rival leaders.[78] The augmenting numbers of the
people, far from obscuring the salient individual, only make for him
a larger theatre of success; and personal reputation—whether for
wealth, statesmanship, literary achievement, or for mere singularity—is
organized on a greater scale than ever before. One who is familiar
with any province of American life, as for example, that of charitable
and penal reform, is aware that almost every advance is made through
the embodiment of timely ideas in one or a few energetic individuals
who set an example for the country to follow. Experience with numbers,
instead of showing the insignificance of the individual, proves that
if he has faith and a worthy aim there is no limit to what he may do;
and we find, accordingly, plenty of courage in starting new projects.
The country is full of men who find the joys of self-assertion, if not
always of outward success, in the bold pursuit of hazardous enterprises.
If there is a deficiency of literary and artistic achievement in a
democracy of this kind, it is due to some other cause than a general
submergence of the individual in the mass.
The dead-level theory, then, is sufficiently discredited as a general
law by the undiminished ascendency of salient individualities in every
province of activity. The enlargement of social consciousness does not
alter the essential relation of individuality to life, but simply gives
it a greater field of success or failure. The man of genius may meet
with more competition, but if he is truly great a larger world is his.
To imagine that the mass will submerge the individual is to suppose
that one aspect of society will stand still while the other grows. It
rests upon a superficial, numerical way of thinking, which regards
individuals as fixed units each of which must become less conspicuous
the more they are multiplied. But if the man of genius represents a
spiritual principle his influence is not fixed but grows with the
growth of life itself, and is limited only by the vitality of what he
stands for. Surely the great men of the past—Plato, Dante, Shakespeare
and the rest—are not submerged, nor in danger of being; nor is it
apparent why their successors should be.
The real cause of literary and artistic weakness (in so far as it
exists) I take to be chiefly the spiritual disorganization incident
to a time of rather sudden transition. How this condition, and
others closely associated with it, are unfavorable to great æsthetic
production, I shall try to point out under the four heads, confusion,
commercialism, haste and zeal for diffusion.
With reference to the higher products of culture, not only the United
States, but in some degree contemporary civilization in general, is a
confused, a raw, society, not as being democratic but as being new. It
is our whole newspaper and factory epoch that is crude, and scarcely
more so in America than in England or Germany; the main difference in
favor of European countries being that the present cannot so easily be
separated from the conditions of an earlier culture. It is a general
trait of the time that social types are disintegrated, old ones going
to pieces and new ones not perfected, leaving the individual without
adequate discipline either in the old or in the new.
Now works of enduring greatness seem to depend, among other things,
on a certain ripeness of historical conditions. No matter how gifted
an individual may be, he is in no way apart from his time, but has
to take that and make the best of it he can; the man of genius is in
one point of view only a twig upon which a mature tendency bears its
perfect fruit. In the new epoch the vast things in process are as yet
so unfinished that individual gifts are scarce sufficient to bring
anything to a classical completeness; so that our life remains somewhat
inarticulate, our literature, and still more our plastic art, being
inadequate exponents of what is most vital in the modern spirit.
The psychological effect of confusion is a lack of mature culture
groups, and of what they only can do for intellectual or æsthetic
production. What this means may, perhaps, be made clearer by a
comparison drawn from athletic sports. We find in our colleges that
to produce a winning foot-ball team, or distinguished performance in
running or jumping, it is essential first of all to have a spirit of
intense interest in these things, which shall arouse the ambition of
those having natural gifts, support them in their training and reward
their success. Without this group spirit no efficient organization,
no high standard of achievement, can exist, and a small institution
that has this will easily surpass a large one that lacks it. And
experience shows that it takes much time to perfect such a spirit and
the organizations through which it is expressed.
In quite the same way any ripe development of productive power in
literary or other art implies not merely capable individuals but
the perfection of a social group, whose traditions and spirit the
individual absorbs, and which floats him up to a point whence he can
reach unique achievement. The unity of this group or type is spiritual,
not necessarily local or temporal, and so may be difficult to trace,
but its reality is as sure as the principle that man is a social
being and cannot think sanely and steadfastly except in some sort of
sympathy with his fellows. There must be others whom we can conceive as
sharing, corroborating and enhancing our ideals, and to no one is such
association more necessary than the man of genius.
The group is likely to be more apparent or tangible in some arts than
in others: it is generally quite evident in painting, sculpture,
architecture and music, where a regular development by the passage of
inspiration from one artist to another can almost always be traced. In
literature the connections are less obvious, chiefly because this art
is in its methods more disengaged from time and place, so that it is
easier to draw inspiration from distant sources. It is also partly a
matter of temperament, men of somewhat solitary imagination being able
to form their group out of remote personalities, and so to be almost
independent of time and place. Thus Thoreau lived with the Greek and
Hindoo classics, with the old English poets, and with the suggestions
of nature; but even he owed much to contemporary influences, and the
more he is studied the less solitary he appears. Is not this the case
also with Wordsworth, with Dante, with all men who are supposed to have
stood alone?
The most competent of all authorities on this question—Goethe—was a
full believer in the dependence of genius on influences. “People are
always talking about originality,” he says, “but what do they mean?
As soon as we are born the world begins to work upon us, and this
goes on to the end. And after all what can we call our own except
energy, strength and will? If I could give an account of all that
I owe to great predecessors and contemporaries, there would be but
a small balance in my favor.”[79] He even held that men of genius
are more dependent upon their environment than others; for, being
thinner-skinned, they are more suggestible, more perturbable, and
peculiarly in need of the right sort of surroundings to keep their
delicate machinery in fruitful action.
No doubt such questions afford ground for infinite debate, but the
underlying principle that the thought of every man is one with that of
a group, visible or invisible, is sure, I think, to prove sound; and if
so it is indispensable that a great capacity should find access to a
group whose ideals and standards are of a sort to make the most of it.
Another reason why the rawness of the modern world is unfavorable
to great production is that the ideals themselves which a great art
should express share in the general incompleteness of things and do
not present themselves to the mind clearly defined and incarnate in
vivid symbols. Perhaps a certain fragmentariness and pettiness in
contemporary art and literature is due more to this cause than to any
other—to the fact that the aspirations of the time, large enough,
certainly, are too much obscured in smoke to be clearly and steadily
regarded. We may believe, for example, in democracy, but it can hardly
be said that we _see_ democracy, as the middle ages, in their art, saw
the Christian religion.
From this point of view of groups and organization it is easy to
understand why the “individualism” of our epoch does not necessarily
produce great individuals. Individuality may easily be aggressive
and yet futile, because not based on the training afforded by
well-organized types—like the fruitless valor of an isolated
soldier. Mr. Brownell points out that the prevalence of this sort of
individuality in our art and life is a point of contrast between us and
the French. Paris, compared with New York, has the “organic quality
which results from variety of types,” as distinguished from variety of
individuals. “We do far better in the production of striking artistic
personalities than we do in the general medium of taste and culture. We
figure well, invariably, at the Salon.... Comparatively speaking, of
course, we have no _milieu_.”[80]
The same conditions underlie that comparative uniformity of American
life which wearies the visitor and implants in the native such a
passion for Europe. When a populous society springs up rapidly
from a few transplanted seeds, its structure, however vast, is
necessarily somewhat simple and monotonous. A thousand towns, ten
thousand churches, a million houses, are built on the same models,
and the people and the social institutions do not altogether escape a
similar poverty of types. No doubt this is sometimes exaggerated, and
America does present many picturesque variations, but only a reckless
enthusiasm will equal them with those of Europe. How unspeakably
inferior in exterior aspect and in many inner conditions of culture
must any recent civilization be to that, let us say, of Italy, whose
accumulated riches represent the deposit of several thousand years.
Such deposits, however, belong to the past; and as regards contemporary
accretions the sameness of London or Rome is hardly less than that of
Chicago. It is a matter of the epoch, more conspicuous here chiefly
because it has had fuller sweep. A heavy fall of crude commercialism is
rapidly obscuring the contours of history.
In comparison with Europe America has the advantages that come from
being more completely in the newer current of things. It is nearer,
perhaps, to the spirit of the coming order, and so perhaps more likely,
in due time, to give it adequate utterance in art. Another benefit of
being new is the attitude of confidence that it fosters. If America
could hardly have sustained the assured mastery of Tennyson, neither,
perhaps, could England an optimism like that of Emerson. In contrast to
the latter, Carlyle, Ruskin and Tolstoi—prophets of an older world—are
shadowed by a feeling of the ascendency and inertia of ancient and
somewhat decadent institutions. They are afraid of them, and so are apt
to be rather shrill in protest. An American, accustomed to see human
nature have pretty much its own way, has seldom any serious mistrust of
the outcome. Nearly all of our writers—as Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell,
Whittier, Holmes, Thoreau, Whitman, even Hawthorne—have been of a
cheerful and wholesome personality.[81]
On the other hand, an old civilization has from its mere antiquity a
richness and complexity of spiritual life that cannot be transplanted
to a new world. The immigrants bring with them the traditions of which
they feel in immediate need, such as those necessary to found the
state, the church and the family; but even these lose something of
their original flavor, while much of what is subtler and less evidently
useful is left behind. We must remember, too, that the culture of the
Old World is chiefly a class culture, and that the immigrants have
mostly come from a class that had no great part in it.
With this goes loss of the visible monuments of culture inherited from
the past—architecture, painting, sculpture, ancient universities and
the like. Burne-Jones, the English painter, speaking of the commercial
city in which he spent his youth, says: ... “if there had been one
cast from ancient Greek sculpture, or one faithful copy of a great
Italian picture, to be seen in Birmingham when I was a boy, I should
have begun to paint ten years before I did ... even the silent presence
of great works in your town will produce an impression on those who
see them, and the next generation will, without knowing how or why,
find it easier to learn than this one does whose surroundings are so
unlovely.”[82]
Nor is American life favorable to the rapid crystallization of a new
artistic culture; it is too transient and restless; transatlantic
migration is followed by internal movements from east to west and from
city to country; while on top of these we have a continuous subversion
of industrial relations.[83]
Another element of special confusion in our life is the headlong
mixture of races, temperaments and traditions that comes from the
new immigration, from the irruption by millions of peoples from the
south and east of the Old World. If they were wholly inferior, as we
sometimes imagine, it would perhaps not matter so much; but the truth
is that they contest every intellectual function with the older stock,
and, in the universities for instance, are shortly found teaching
our children their own history and literature. They assimilate, but
always with a difference, and in the northern United States, formerly
dominated by New England influences, a revolution from this cause is
well under way. It is as if a kettle of broth were cooking quietly on
the fire, when some one should come in and add suddenly a great pailful
of raw meats, vegetables and spices—a rich combination, possibly, but
likely to require much boiling. That fine English sentiment that came
down to us through the colonists more purely, perhaps, than to the
English in the old country, is passing away—as a distinct current,
that is—lost in a flood of cosmopolitan life. Before us, no doubt, is a
larger humanity, but behind is a cherished spirit that can hardly live
again; and, like the boy who leaves home, we must turn our thoughts
from an irrevocable past and go hopefully on to we know not what.
In short, our world lacks maturity of culture organization. What we
sometimes call—truly enough as regards its economic life—our complex
civilization, is simple to the point of poverty in spiritual structure.
We have cast off much rubbish and decay and are preparing, we may
reasonably hope, to produce an art and literature worthy of our vigor
and aspiration, but in the past, certainly, we have hardly done so.
Haste and the superficiality and strain which attend upon it are widely
and insidiously destructive of good work in our day. No other condition
of mind or of society—not ignorance, poverty, oppression or hate—kills
art as haste does. Almost any phase of life may be ennobled if there
is only calm enough in which the brooding mind may do its perfect work
upon it; but out of hurry nothing noble ever did or can emerge. In art
human nature should come to a total, adequate expression; a spiritual
tendency should be perfected and recorded in calmness and joy. But ours
is, on the whole, a time of stress, of the habit of incomplete work;
its products are unlovely and unrestful and such as the future will
have no joy in. The pace is suited only to turn out mediocre goods on a
vast scale.
It is, to put the matter otherwise, a _loud_ time. The newspapers,
the advertising, the general insistence of suggestion, have an effect
of din, so that one feels that he must raise his voice to be heard,
and the whispers of the gods are hard to catch. Men whose voices are
naturally low and fine easily lose this trait in the world and begin
to shout like the rest. That is to say, they exaggerate and repeat and
advertise and caricature, saying too much in the hope that a little may
be heard. Of course, in the long run this is a fatal delusion; nothing
will really be listened to except that whose quiet truth makes it worth
hearing; but it is one so rooted in the general state of things that
few escape it. Even those who preserve the lower tone do so with an
effort which is in itself disquieting.
A strenuous state of mind is always partial and special, sacrificing
scope to intensity and more fitted for execution than insight.
It is useful at times, but if habitual cuts us off from that sea
of subconscious spirit from which all original power flows. “The
world of art,” says Paul Bourget, speaking of America, “requires
less self-consciousness—an impulse of life which forgets itself,
the alternations of dreamy idleness with fervid execution.”[84] So
Henry James[85] remarks that we have practically lost the faculty of
attention, meaning, I suppose, that unstrenuous, brooding sort of
attention required to produce or appreciate works of art—and as regards
the prevalent type of business or professional mind this seems quite
true.
It comes mainly from having too many things to think of, from the
urgency and distraction of an epoch and a country in which the
traditional structures that support the mind and save its energy have
largely gone to pieces. The endeavor to supply by will functions that
in other conditions would be automatic creates a rush which imitation
renders epidemic, and from which it is not easy to escape in order to
mature one’s powers in fruitful quiet.
There is an immense spiritual economy in any settled state of society,
sufficient, so far as production is concerned, to offset much that
is stagnant or oppressive; the will is saved and concentrated; while
freedom, as De Tocqueville noted, sometimes produces “a small,
distressing motion, a sort of incessant jostling of men, which annoys
and disturbs the mind without exciting or elevating it.”[86] The modern
artist has too much choice. If he attempts to deal largely with life,
his will is overworked at the expense of æsthetic synthesis. Freedom
and opportunity are without limit, all cultures within his reach and
splendid service awaiting performance. But the task of creating a
glad whole seems beyond any ordinary measure of talent. The result in
most cases—as has been said of architecture—is “confusion of types,
illiterate combinations, an evident breathlessness of effort and
striving for effect, with the inevitable loss of repose, dignity and
style.”[87] A mediæval cathedral or a Greek temple was the culmination
of a long social growth, a gradual, deliberate, corporate achievement,
to which the individual talent added only the finishing touch. The
modern architect has, no doubt, as much personal ability, but the
demands upon it are excessive; it would seem that only a transcendent
synthetic genius of the calibre of Dante could deal adequately with our
scattered conditions.
The cause of strain is radical and somewhat feverish change, not
democracy as such. A large part of the people, particularly the farming
class, are little affected by it, and there are indications that in
America, where it has been greater than elsewhere, the worst is now
over.
By commercialism, in this connection, we may understand a preoccupation
of the ability of the people with material production and with the
trade and finance based upon it. This again is in part a trait of the
period, in part a peculiarity of America, in its character as a new
country with stumps to get out and material civilization to erect from
the ground up.
The result of it is that ability finds constant opportunity and
incitement to take a commercial direction, and little to follow pure
art or letters. A man likes to succeed in something, and if he is
conscious of the capacity to make his way in business or professional
life, he is indisposed to endure the poverty, uncertainty and
indifference which attend the pursuit of an artistic calling. Less
prosperous societies owe something to that very lack of opportunity
which makes it less easy for artistic ability to take another direction.
An even greater peril is the debasing of art by an uncultured market.
There seem to be plenty of artists of every kind, but their standard
of success is mostly low. The beginner too early gets commercial
employment in which he is not held up to any high ideal. This brings
us back to the lack of a well-knit artistic tradition to educate both
the artist and the public, the lack of a type, “the non-existence,” as
Mr. Russell Sturgis says, “of an artistic community with a mind of its
own and a certain general agreement as to what a work of art ought to
be.” This lack involves the weakness of the criticism which is required
to make the artist see himself as he ought to be. “That criticism is
nowhere in proportion to the need of it,” says Henry James, “is the
visiting observer’s first and last impression—an impression so constant
that it at times swallows up or elbows out every other.”
The antipathy between art and the commercial spirit, however, is
often much overstated. As a matter of history art and literature have
flourished most conspicuously in prosperous commercial societies,
such as Athens, Florence, Venice, the communes of the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries, the trading cities of Germany, the Dutch Republic
and the England of Elizabeth. Nothing does more than commerce to awaken
intelligence, enterprise and a free spirit, and these are favorable
to ideal production. It is only the extreme one-sidedness of our
civilization in this regard that is prejudicial.
It is also true—and here we touch upon something pertaining more to the
very nature of democracy than the matters so far mentioned—that the
zeal for diffusion which springs from communication and sympathy has in
it much that is not directly favorable to the finer sorts of production.
Which is the better, fellowship or distinction? There is much to be
said on both sides, but the finer spirits of our day lean toward the
former, and find it more human and exhilarating to spread abroad the
good things the world already has than to prosecute a lonesome search
for new ones. I notice among the choicest people I know—those who seem
to me most representative of the inner trend of democracy—a certain
generous contempt for distinction and a passion to cast their lives
heartily on the general current. But the highest things are largely
those which do not immediately yield fellowship or diffuse joy. Though
making in the end for a general good, they are as private in their
direct action as selfishness itself, from which they are not always
easily distinguished. They involve intense self-consciousness. Probably
men who follow the whispers of genius will always be more or less at
odds with their fellows.
Ours, then, is an Age of Diffusion. The best minds and hearts seek joy
and self-forgetfulness in active service, as in another time they might
seek it in solitary worship; God, as we often hear, being sought more
through human fellowship and less by way of isolate self-consciousness
than was the case a short time since.
I need hardly particularize the educational and philanthropic zeal
that, in one form or another, incites the better minds among our
contemporaries and makes them feel guilty when they are not in some way
exerting themselves to spread abroad material or spiritual goods. No
one would wish to see this zeal diminished; and perhaps it makes in the
long run for every kind of worthy achievement; but its immediate effect
is often to multiply the commonplace, giving point to De Tocqueville’s
reflection that “in aristocracies a few great pictures are produced,
in democratic countries a vast number of insignificant ones.”[88] In a
spiritual as well as a material sense there is a tendency to fabricate
cheap goods for an uncritical market.
“Men and gods are too extense.”[89]
Finally, all theories that aim to deduce from social conditions the
limits of personal achievement must be received with much caution.
It is the very nature of a virile sense of self to revolt from the
usual and the expected and pursue a lonesome road. Of course it must
have support, but it may find this in literature and imaginative
intercourse. So, in spite of everything, we have had in America men
of signal distinction—such, for instance, as Emerson, Thoreau and
Whitman—and we shall no doubt have more. We need fear no dearth of
inspiring issues; for if old ones disappear energetic minds will always
create new ones by making greater demands upon life.
The very fact that our time has so largely cast off all sorts of
structure is in one way favorable to enduring production, since it
means that we have fallen back upon human nature, upon that which is
permanent and essential, the adequate record of which is the chief
agent in giving life to any product of the mind.
FOOTNOTES:
[75] Democracy in America, vol. ii, book iv, chap. 7. But elsewhere
he expresses the opinion that this levelling and confusion is only
temporary. See, for example, book iii, chap. 21.
[76] Republic, book viii.
[77] Outre-Mer. English Translation, 306.
[78] See the final chapter of his French Traits.
[79] Conversation with Eckermann, May 12, 1825.
[80] French Traits, 385, 387, 393.
[81] Poe is the only notable exception that occurs to me.
[82] Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones, ii, 100, 101.
[83] Our most notable group of writers—flourishing at Concord and
Boston about 1850—is, of course, connected with the maturing, in
partial isolation, of a local type of culture, now disintegrated and
dispersed on the wider currents of the time.
[84] Outre-Mer, 25.
[85] In his essay on Balzac.
[86] Democracy in America, vol. ii, book i, chap. 10.
[87] Henry Van Brunt, Greek Lines, 225. Some of these phrases, such
as “illiterate combinations,” could never apply to the work of good
architects.
[88] Democracy in America, vol. ii, book i, chap. 11.
[89] Emerson, Alphonso of Castile.
CHAPTER XVI
THE TREND OF SENTIMENT
MEANING AND GENERAL TREND OF SENTIMENT—ATTENUATION—REFINEMENT—SENSE
OF JUSTICE—TRUTH AS JUSTICE—AS REALISM—AS EXPEDIENCY—AS ECONOMY OF
ATTENTION—HOPEFULNESS.
By sentiment I mean socialized feeling, feeling which has been raised
by thought and intercourse out of its merely instinctive state and
become properly human. It implies imagination, and the medium in which
it chiefly lives is sympathetic contact with the minds of others. Thus
love is a sentiment, while lust is not; resentment is, but not rage;
the fear of disgrace or ridicule, but not animal terror, and so on.
Sentiment is the chief motive-power of life, and as a rule lies deeper
in our minds and is less subject to essential change than thought, from
which, however, it is not to be too sharply separated.
Two traits in the growth of sentiment are perhaps characteristic of
modern life, both of which, as will appear, are closely bound up with
the other psychological changes that have already been discussed.
First a trend toward diversification: under the impulse of a growing
diversity of suggestion and intercourse many new varieties and shades
of sentiment are developed. Like a stream which is distributed for
irrigation, the general current of social feeling is drawn off into
many small channels.
Second a trend toward humanism, meaning by this a wider reach and
application of the sentiments that naturally prevail in the familiar
intercourse of primary groups. Following a tendency evident in all
phases of the social mind, these expand and organize themselves at
the expense of sentiments that go with the more formal or oppressive
structures of an earlier epoch.
The diversification of sentiment seems to involve some degree of
attenuation, or decline in volume, and also some growth of refinement.
By the former I mean that the constant and varied demands upon feeling
which modern life makes—in contrast to the occasional but often severe
demands of a more primitive society—give rise, very much as in the case
of the irrigating stream, to the need and practice of more economy and
regularity in the flow, so that “animated moderation”[90] in feeling
succeeds the alternations of apathy and explosion characteristic of a
ruder condition. Thus our emotional experience is made up of diverse
but for the most part rather mild excitements, so that the man most at
home in our civilization, though more nimble in sentiment than the man
of an earlier order, is perhaps somewhat inferior in depth. Something
of the same difference can be seen between the city man and the farmer;
while the latter is inferior in versatility and readiness of feeling,
he has a greater store of it laid up, which is apt to give superior
depth and momentum to such sentiment as he does cherish. Who has not
experienced the long-minded faithfulness and kindness, or perhaps
resentment, of country people, and contrasted them with the less stable
feelings of those who live a more urbane life?
In saying that life tends toward refinement it is only a general trend
that is asserted. We must admit that many phases of refined sentiment
have been more perfectly felt and expressed in the past than they are
now; but this is a matter of the maturity of special types of culture,
rather than of general progress. Thus the Italian Renaissance produced
wonders of refinement in art, as in the painting, let us say, of
Botticelli; but it was, on the whole, a bloody, harsh and sensual time
compared with ours, a time when assassination, torture and rape were
matters of every day. So, also, there is a refinement of the sense
of language in Shakespeare and his contemporaries which we can only
admire, while their plays depict a rather gross state of feeling. A
course of reading in English fiction, beginning with Chaucer and ending
with James, Howells and Mrs. Ward, would certainly leave the impression
that our sensibilities had, on the whole, grown finer.
And this is even more true of the common people than of the well-to-do
class with which literature is chiefly occupied: the tendency to
the diffusion of refinement being more marked than its increase in
a favored order. The sharp contrast in manners and feelings between
the “gentleman,” as formerly understood, and the peasant, artisan and
trading classes has partly disappeared. Differences in wealth and
occupation no longer necessitate differences in real culture, the
opportunities for which are coming to be open to all classes, and
in America, at least, the native-bred farmer or hand-worker is not
uncommonly, in essential qualities, a gentleman.
The general fact is that the activities of life, to which feeling
responds, have become more various and subtle and less crudely
determined by animal conditions. Material variety and comfort is
one phase of this: we become habituated to a comparatively delicate
existence and so are trained to shun coarseness. Communication, by
giving abundance and choice of social contacts, also acts to diversify
and refine sentiment; the growth of order disaccustoms us to violence,
and democracy tends to remove the degrading spectacle of personal or
class oppression.
This modern refinement has the advantage that, being a general rise
in level rather than the achievement of a class or a nation, it is
probably secure. It is not, like the refinement of Greece, the somewhat
precarious fruit of transient conditions, but a possession of the race,
in no more danger of dying out than the steam-engine.
To the trend toward humanism and the sentiments—such as justice, truth,
kindness and service—that go with it, I shall devote the rest of this
chapter and the one that follows:
The basis of all sentiment of this kind is the sense of community, or
of sharing in a common social or spiritual whole, membership in which
gives to all a kind of inner equality, no matter what their special
parts may be. It is felt, however, that the differences among men
should be functional and intrinsic, not arbitrary or accidental. The
sense of justice is usually strong among the members of a sympathetic
group, the basis for determining what is just being the perception of
some purpose which every one is to serve, each in his own way, so that
he who rightly holds a higher place is the one who can function best
for the common good. It does not hurt my self-respect or my allegiance
to remain a common seaman while another becomes captain of the ship,
provided I recognize that he is the fitter man for the place; and if
the distribution of stations in society were evidently of this sort
there would be no serious protest against it. What makes trouble is the
growth of an ideal of fair play which the actual system of things does
not satisfy.
The widening of sympathy and the consciousness of larger unity have
brought the hope and demand for a corresponding extension of justice;
and all sorts of humanity—not to speak of the lower animals—profit
by this wider sentiment. Classes seek to understand each other; the
personality of women and children is recognized and fostered; there
is some attempt to sympathize with alien nations and races, civilized
or savage, and to help them to their just place in the common life of
mankind.
Our conception of international rights reflects the same view, and
the American, at least, desires that his country should treat other
countries as one just man treats another, and is proud when he can
believe that she has done so. It is surely of some significance that in
the most powerful of democracies national selfishness, in the judgment
of a competent European observer, is less cynical and obtrusive than
in any of the great states of Europe.[91]
Truth is a kind of justice, and wherever there is identification of
oneself with the life of the group it is fostered, and lying tends to
be felt as mean and impolitic. Serious falsehood among friends is, I
believe, universally abhorred—by savages and children as well as by
civilized adults. To lie to a friend is to hit him from behind, to trip
him up in the dark, and so the moral sentiment of every group attempts
to suppress falsehood among its members, however it may be encouraged
as against outsiders. “Wherefore,” says St. Paul, “putting away lying,
speak every man truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of
another.”[92]
Our democratic system aims to be a larger organization of moral
unity, and so far as it is so, in the feeling of the individual, it
fosters this open and downright attitude toward his fellows. In idea,
and largely in fact, we are a commonwealth, of which each one is a
member by his will and intelligence, as well as by necessity, and with
which, accordingly, the human sentiment of loyalty among those who are
members one of another is naturally in force. The very disgust with
which, in a matter like assessment for taxation, men contemplate the
incompatibility that sometimes exists between truth and fairness, is a
tribute to the prevailing sentiment of sincerity.
An artificial system, that is one which, however solid its hidden
foundations—and of course all systems rest on fact of some sort—does
not visibly flow from principles of truth and fairness, fails to
arouse this loyalty of partnership. One may be devoted to it, but
his devotion will be based rather on reverence for something above
him than on a sense of participation, and will call for submission
rather than for straightforward dealing. It would seem that lying and
servility are natural in the attitude of a subject toward a master,
that is toward a superior but uncomprehending power; while truth is
generated in sympathy. Tyranny may be said to make falsehood a virtue,
and in contemporary Russia, for instance, stealth and evasion are the
necessary and justifiable means of pursuing the aims of human nature.
Another reason for the association of freedom with truth is that the
former is a training in the sense of social cause and effect; the free
play of human forces being a constant demonstration of the power of
reality as against sham. The more men experiment intelligently with
life, the more they come to believe in definite causation and the less
in trickery. Freedom means continuous experiment, a constant testing
of the individual and of all kinds of social ideas and arrangements.
It tends, then, to a social realism; “Her open eyes desire the truth.”
The best people I know are pervaded by the feeling that life is so real
that it is not worth while to make believe. “Knights of the unshielded
heart,” they desire nothing so much as to escape from all pretense and
prudery and confront things as they really are—confident that they are
not irremediably bad. I read in a current newspaper that “brutal,
unvarnished, careless frankness is the pose of the new type of girl.
She has not been developed in a school of evasion. To pretend you gave
a hundred dollars for a gown when you really gave fifty for it, is a
sorry jest for her and a waste of time.... If she owns to the new gown
she tells you its cost, the name of the inexpensive dressmaker who made
it, and just where she economized in its price.”
There is a tribute to truth in the very cynicism and shamelessness with
which flagitious politicians and financiers declare and defend their
practices. Like Napoleon or Macchiavelli they have at least cast off
superstition and are dealing with reality, though they apprehend it
only in a low and partial aspect. If they lie, they do so deliberately,
scientifically, with a view to producing a certain effect upon people
whom they regard as fools. It only needs that this rational spirit
should ally itself with higher sentiment and deeper insight in order
that it should become a source of virtue.
I will not here inquire minutely how far or in what sense honesty is
the best policy, but it is safe to say that the more life is organized
upon a basis of freedom and justice the more truth there is in the
proverb. When the general state of things is anarchical, as in the
time of Macchiavelli, rationalism may lead to the cynical use of
falsehood as the tool suited to the material; nor is it deniable that
this is often the case at the present day. But modern democracy aims
to organize justice, and in so far as it succeeds it creates a medium
in which truth tends to survive and falsehood to perish. We all wish
to live in such a medium: there is nothing more grateful than the
conviction that the order of things is sincere, is founded on reality
of some sort; and in a good measure the American, for instance, does
have this conviction. It makes democracy a soft couch for the soul:
one can let himself go and does not have to make believe; pretence is
no part of the system; be your real self and you will find your right
place.
“I know how the great basement of all power
Is frankness, and a true tongue to the world;
And how intriguing secrecy is proof
Of fear and weakness, and a hollow state.”
An artificial system must maintain itself by suppressing the free play
of social forces and inculcating its own artificial ideas in place of
those derived from experience. Free association, free speech, free
thinking, in so far as they touch upon matters vital to authority,
are and always have been put down under such systems, and this means
that the whole mind of the people is emasculated, as the mind of
Italy was by Spanish rule and religious reaction in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries. “Oriental mendacity” is ascribed to the
insecurity of life and property under arbitrary rule; but it is not
merely life and property that are affected. The very idea of truth
and reason in human affairs can hardly prevail under a system which
affords no observation to corroborate it. The fact that in diplomacy,
for instance, there is a growing belief that it pays to be simple and
honest, I take to be a reflection of the fact that the international
system, based more and more on intelligent public opinion, is
gradually coming to be a medium in which truth is fit to live.
Perhaps something of this hostility to truth will linger in all
establishments, however they may be humanized: they all involve a kind
of vested interest in certain ideas which is not favorable to entire
frankness. It sometimes appears that one who would be quite honest and
stand for human nature should avoid not only religious, political and
educational allegiance, but law, journalism, and all positions where
one has to speak as part of an institution. As a rule the great seers
and thinkers have stood as much aside from institutions as the nature
of the human mind permits.
Still another reason for the keener sense of truth in our day is the
need to economize attention. In societies where life is dull, fiction,
circumlocution and elaborate forms of intercourse serve as a sort of
pastime; and the first arouses no resentment unless some definite
injury is attempted by it. Although the Chinese are upright in keeping
their pecuniary engagements, we are told that mere truth is not valued
by them, and is not inculcated by their classic moralists. So in Italy
the people seem to think that a courteous and encouraging lie is kinder
than the bare truth, as when a man will pretend to give you information
when he knows nothing about the matter. A strenuous civilization like
ours makes one intolerant of all this. It is not that we are always
hurried; but we are so often made to feel the limitations of our
attention that we dislike to waste it. Thought is life, and we wish
to get the most reality for a given outlay of it that is to be had.
We wish to come at once to the Real Thing, whether it be a business
proposition or the most subtle theory.
Another sentiment favored by the times is social courage and
hopefulness, a disposition to push forward with confidence regarding
the future both of the individual and of society at large. That this
attitude is the prevalent one, in American democracy at least, nearly
all observers are agreed. “Let any one,” says Dr. Lyman Abbott,
“stand on one of our great highways and watch the countenances of
the passers-by; the language written on most of them is that of
eagerness, ambition, expectation, hope.”[93] There is something
ruthless about this headlong optimism, which is apt to deny and neglect
failure and despair, as certain religious sects of the day deny and
neglect physical injury; but it answers its purpose of sustaining
the combatants. It springs from a condition in which the individual,
not supported in any one place by a rigid system, is impelled from
childhood to trust himself to the common current of life, to make
experiments, to acquire a habit of venture and a working knowledge of
social forces. The state of things instigates endeavor, and, as a rule,
rewards it sufficiently to keep up one’s courage, while occasional
failure at least takes away that vague dread of the unknown which
is often worse than the reality. Life is natural and vivid, not the
wax-works of an artificial order, and has that enlivening effect that
comes from being thrown back upon human nature. A real pessimism—one
which despairs of the general trend of things—is rare and without
much influence, even the revolutionary sects maintaining that the
changes they desire are in the line of a natural evolution. Discontent
is affirmative and constructive rather than stagnant: it works out
programmes and hopefully agitates for their realization. There is a
kind of piety and trust in God to be seen in the confidence with which
small bodies of men anticipate the success of principles they believe
to be right.
FOOTNOTES:
[90] Bagehot’s phrase. See his Physics and Politics.
[91] See James Bryce, The American Commonwealth, chap. 87.
[92] Ephesians, iv, 25.
[93] In Shaler’s United States, ii, 594.
CHAPTER XVII
THE TREND OF SENTIMENT—CONTINUED
NATURE OF THE SENTIMENT OF BROTHERHOOD—FAVORED BY COMMUNICATION
AND SETTLED PRINCIPLES—HOW FAR CONTEMPORARY LIFE FOSTERS IT—HOW
FAR UNCONGENIAL TO IT—GENERAL OUTCOME IN THIS REGARD—THE SPIRIT
OF SERVICE—THE TREND OF MANNERS—BROTHERHOOD IN RELATION TO
CONFLICT—BLAME—DEMOCRACY AND CHRISTIANITY.
The sentiment of mutual kindness or brotherhood is a simple and
widespread thing, belonging not only to man in every stage of his
development, but extending, in a crude form, over a great part of
animal life. Prince Kropotkin, in his Mutual Aid a Factor in Evolution,
has collected illustrations of its universality and significance. “...
the necessity of communicating impressions,” he says, “of playing, of
chattering, or of simply feeling the proximity of other kindred living
beings pervades nature, and is, as much as any other physiological
function, a distinctive feature of life and impressionability.”[94]
Darwin perceived, what Kropotkin and others have illustrated with
convincing fulness, that this fusing kindliness underlies all higher
phases of evolution, and is essential to the coöperative life in
which thought and power are developed. The popular notion that kindly
sentiment can only be a hindrance to the survival of the fittest is a
somewhat pernicious misapprehension.
This sentiment flourishes most in primary groups, where, as we have
seen, it contributes to an ideal of moral unity of which kindness is
a main part. Under its influence the I-feeling becomes a we-feeling,
which seeks no good that is not also the good of the group. And the
humanism of our time strives with renewed energy to make the we-feeling
prevail also in the larger phases of life. “We must demand,” says a
writer who lives very close to the heart of the people,[95] “that the
individual shall be willing to lose the sense of personal achievement,
and shall be content to realize his activity only in connection with
the activity of the many.” Huxley at one time felt this so strongly as
to say, “If I had 400 pounds a year I would never let my name appear to
anything I did or shall do.”[96]
Such utterances, though significant, are one-sided, and it is perhaps
more in the way of real progress to demand, not that the sense of
personal achievement shall be given up, but that it shall be more
allied with fellow-feeling. The sort of ambition congenial to the
we-feeling is one directed toward those common aims in which the
success of one is the success of all, not toward admiration or riches.
Material goods, one feels, should not be appropriated for pride or
luxury, but, being limited in amount, should be used in a consciousness
of the general need, and apportioned by rules of justice framed to
promote a higher life in the whole.
Much might be said of the we-feeling as joy:
Perchè quanto si dice piu li nostro,
Tanto possiede piu di ben ciascuno,
E piu di caritate arde in quel chiostro.[97]
For there, as much the more as one says _Our_,
So much the more of good each one possesseth,
And more of charity in that cloister burns.[98]
There is nothing more wholesome or less pursued by compunction.
To mingle our emotions with fellowship enlarges and soothes them;
even resentment on behalf of _us_ is less rankling than on behalf
of only _me_, and there is something cheerful in suffering wrong in
friendly company. One of the most obvious things about selfishness
is the unhappiness of it, the lack of imaginative expatiation, of
the inspiration of working consciously with a vast whole, of “the
exhilaration and uplift which come when the individual sympathy
and intelligence is caught into the forward intuitive movement of
the mass.”[99] Fellowship is thus a good kind of joy in that it is
indefinitely diffusible; though by no means incapable of abuse, since
it may be cultivated at the expense of truth, sanity and individuality.
Everything that tends to bring mankind together in larger wholes
of sympathy and understanding tends to enlarge the reach of kindly
feeling. Among the conditions that most evidently have this effect are
facility of communication and the acceptance of common principles.
These permit the contact and fusion of minds and tend to mould the
group into a moral whole.
In times of settled principles and of progress in the arts of
communication the idea of the brotherhood of man has a natural growth;
as it had under the Roman Empire. On the other hand, it is dissipated
by whatever breaks up the moral unity and makes human interests seem
inconsistent. Not only war, but all kinds of destructive or unregulated
competition, in which the good of one party appears to be a private
good gained by the harm of another, are reflected in the mind by
unkindly feeling. What human nature needs is—not the disappearance of
opposition, which would be death—but the suppression of destructive
forms, and the control of all forms by principles of justice and
kindness, so that men may feel that the good survives.
As regards the bearing of contemporary conditions upon the spirit of
brotherhood, we find forces at work so conflicting that it is easy to
reach opposite conclusions, according to the bias of the observer.
The enlargement of consciousness has brought a broadening of sentiment
in all directions. As a rule kindly feeling follows understanding,
and there was never such opportunity and encouragement to understand
as there is now. Distant peoples—Russians, Chinese and South Sea
Islanders; alienated classes—criminals, vagrants, idiots and the
insane, are brought close to us, and the natural curiosity of man about
his fellows is exploited and stimulated by the press. Indeed, the
decried habit of reading the newspapers contributes much to a general
we-feeling, since the newspaper is a reservoir of commonplace thought
of which every one partakes—and which he knows he may impute to every
one else—pervading the world with a conscious community of sentiment
which tends toward kindliness.
Even more potent, perhaps, is the indirect action of communication in
making it possible to organize all phases of life on a larger scale and
on a more human basis; in promoting democracy and breaking down caste.
Under a democratic system the masses have means of self-expression;
they vote, strike, and print their views. They have power, and this,
at bottom, is the source of all respect and consideration. People of
other classes have to think of them, feel with them and recognize them
as of a common humanity. Moreover, in tending to wipe out conventional
distinctions and leave only those that are functional, democracy
fosters the notion of an organic whole, from which all derive and in
which they find their value. A sense of common nature and purpose is
thus nourished, a conscious unity of action which gives the sense of
fellowship. It comes to be assumed that men are of the same stuff, and
a kind of universal sympathy—not incompatible with opposition—is spread
abroad. It is realized that “there are diversities of gifts but the
same spirit.”
On the other hand, our life is full of a confusion which often leaves
the individual conscious only of his separateness, engaged in a
struggle which, so far as he sees, has no more relation to justice and
the common good than a dog-fight. Whether he win or lose makes, in
this case, little difference as to the effect upon his general view
of life: he infers that the world is a place where one must either
eat or be eaten; the idea of the brotherhood of man appears to be
an enervating sentimentalism, and the true philosophy that of the
struggle for existence, which he understands in a brutal sense opposite
to the real teaching of science. Nothing could be more uncongenial
to the we-feeling than this view, which unfortunate experience has
prepared many to embrace, taking from life, as it does, its breadth and
hopefulness, the joy and inspiration of working in a vast and friendly
whole.
Probably most of us are under the sway of both of these tendencies. We
feel the new idealism, the sweep and exhilaration of democracy, but
we practise, nevertheless, a thrifty exploitation of all the private
advantages we can decently lay our hands on; nor have we the moral
vigor to work out any reconciliation of these principles. Experience
shows, I think, that until a higher sentiment, like brotherly kindness,
attains some definite organization and programme, so that men are held
up to it, it is remarkably ineffective in checking selfish activities.
People drift on and on in lower courses, which at bottom they despise
and dislike, simply because they lack energy and initiative to get out
of them. How true it is that many of us would like to be _made_ to
be better than we are. I have seen promising idealists grow narrow,
greedy and sensual—and of course unhappy—as they prospered in the
world; for no reason, apparently, but lack of definite stimulation to a
higher life. There is firm ground for the opinion that human nature is
prepared for a higher organization than we have worked out.
Certainly there is, on the whole, a more lively and hopeful pursuit of
the brotherhood of man in modern democracy than there ever was, on a
large scale, before. One who is not deaf to the voices of literature,
of social agitation, of ordinary intercourse, can hardly doubt this.
The social settlement and similar movements express it, and so, more
and more, does the whole feeling of our society regarding richer and
poorer. Philanthropy is not only extending, but undergoing a revolution
of principle from alms to justice and from condescension to fellowship.
The wealthy and the educated classes feel, however vaguely, that
they must justify their advantages to their fellow men and their own
consciences by making some public use of them. Gifts—well meant if not
always wise—to education, science and philanthropy are increasing, and
there was never, perhaps, a more prevalent disposition to make unusual
mental acquirements available toward general culture.
Even the love of publicity and display, said to mark our rich people,
has its amiable side as indicating a desire to impress general opinion,
rather than that of an exclusive class. Indeed, if there is anywhere in
American society an exclusive and self-sufficient kind of people, they
are not a kind who have much influence upon the general spirit.
The same sentiment incites us, in our better moments, to shun habits,
modes of dress and the like that are not good in themselves and merely
accentuate class lines; to save on private and material objects so
as to have the more energy to be humanly, spiritually, alive. This,
for example, is the teaching of Thoreau, whose works, especially his
Walden, have latterly a wide circulation. If Thoreau seems a little
too aloof and fastidious to represent democracy, this is not the case
with Whitman, who had joy in the press of cities, and whose passion
was to “utter the word Democratic, the word En Masse.”[100] His chants
express a great gusto in common life: “All this I swallow, it tastes
good, I like it well, it becomes mine; I am the man, I suffered, I was
there.”[101] “Whoever degrades another degrades me.”[102] “By God! I
will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on the
same terms.”[103] “I believe the main purport of these states is to
found a superb friendship, exalté, previously unknown.”[104]
On the whole, Americans may surely claim that there was never before
a great nation in which the people felt so much like a family, had
so kindly and cheerful a sense of a common life. It is not only that
the sentiment has a wider range; there is also more faith in its
future, more belief that government and other institutions can be made
to express it. And the popular agitation of all countries manifests
the same belief—socialism, and even anarchism, as well as the labor
movement and the struggle against monopoly and corruption.
A larger spirit of service is the active side of democratic feeling.
A life of service of some sort—in behalf of the clan or tribe, of the
chief, of the sovereign, of the mistress, of the Church, of God—has
always been the ideal life, since no imaginative and truly human mind
contents itself with a separate good: what is new is that the object
of this service tends to become wider, with the modern expansion of
the imagination, and to include all classes, all nations and races, in
its ideal scope. The narrower boundaries do not disappear, but as they
become less distinct the greater whole becomes more so. As the child
grows until he can see over the hedges bounding his early playground,
so the democratized individual has outgrown the limits of the clan or
the caste.
In the United States, at least, the feeling that everybody ought to be
doing something useful is so established that there is no influential
class within which idleness is respectable. Whatever narrowness there
may be in this spirit, in the way of undervaluing activities whose
usefulness is of an inobvious sort, it is sound on the whole and does
incalculable service in redeeming riches from vulgarity and corruption.
If it be true, as is asserted, that the children of the wealthy, with
us, are on the whole less given to sloth and vice than the same class
in older countries, the reason is to be found in a healthier, more
organic state of public opinion which penetrates all classes with the
perception that the significance of the individual lies in his service
to the whole. That this sentiment is gaining in our colleges is evident
to those who know anything of these institutions. Studies that throw
light on the nature and working of society, past or present, and upon
the opportunities of service or distinction which it offers to the
individual, are rapidly taking the place, for purposes of culture,
of studies whose human value is less, or not so apparent. Classes in
history—political, industrial and social—in economics, in government
and administration, in sociology and ethics, in charities and penology,
are larger year by year. And the young people, chiefly from the
well-to-do classes, who seek these studies, are one and all adherents
of the democratic idea that privilege must be earned by function.
The tendency of manners well expresses that of sentiment, and seems
to be toward a spontaneous courtesy, expressing truth and equality
as against the concealment and, sometimes, the arrogance, of mere
polish. The best practice appears to be to put yourself, on approaching
another, into as open and kindly a frame of mind toward him as you
can, but not to try to express more than you feel, preferring coldness
to affected warmth. Democracy is too busy and too fond of truth and
human nature to like formality, except as an occasional amusement. A
merely formal politeness goes with a crystallized society, indicating a
certain distrust of human nature and desire to cloak or supplant it by
propriety. Thus a Chinese teacher, having a rare opportunity to send a
message to his old mother, called one of his pupils saying, “Here, take
this paper and write me a letter to my mother.” This proceeding struck
the observer as singular, and he enquired if the lad was acquainted
with the teacher’s mother, learning that the boy did not even know
there was such a person. “How, then, was he to know what to say, not
having been told?” To this the schoolmaster made reply: “Doesn’t he
know quite well what to say? For more than a year he has been studying
literary composition, and he is acquainted with a number of elegant
formulas. Do you think he does not know perfectly well how a son ought
to write to a mother?” The letter would have answered equally well
for any other mother in the Empire.[105] Here is one extreme, and the
kindly frontiersman with “no manners at all” is at the other.
No doubt form, in manners as well as elsewhere, is capable of a beauty
and refinement of its own, and probably raw democracy goes to an
anarchic excess in depreciating it; but the sentiment of reality which
demands that form and content should agree, is perhaps a permanent
factor in the best manners.
Conflict, of some sort, is the life of society, and progress emerges
from a struggle in which each individual, class or institution seeks
to realize its own idea of good. The intensity of this struggle
varies directly as the vigor of the people, and its cessation, if
conceivable, would be death. There is, then, no prospect of an amiable
unanimity, and the question arises, What change, if any, in the nature
of opposition and of hostility, accompanies the alleged growth of the
sense of brotherhood?
The answer to this is probably best sought by asking ourselves what is
the difference between the opposition of friends and that of enemies.
Evidently the former may be as energetic as the latter, but it is less
personal: that is, it is not directed against the opponent as a whole,
but against certain views or purposes which the opponent—toward whom
a kindly feeling is still cherished—for the time being represents.
The opposition of enemies, on the other hand, involves a personal
antagonism and is gratified by a personal injury.
Well-conducted sports are a lesson to every one that fair and orderly
opposition may even promote good fellowship; and familiarity with
them, in primary groups, is an excellent preparation for the friendly
competition that ought to prevail in society at large. Indeed it is
only through opposition that we learn to understand one another. In the
moment of struggle the opposing agent may arouse anger, but afterward
the mind, more at ease, views with respect and interest that which
has exhibited so much force. It seems evident, for instance, that the
self-assertion of the wage-earning class, so far as it is orderly and
pursuant of ideals which all classes share, has commanded not only the
respect but the good will of the people at large. Weakness—intrinsic
weakness, the failure of the member to assert its function—is
instinctively despised. I am so far in sympathy with the struggle
for existence as to think that passive kindliness alone, apart from
self-assertion, is a demoralizing ideal, or would be if it were likely
to become ascendant. But the self which is asserted, the ideal fought
for, must be a generous one—involving perhaps self-sacrifice as that is
ordinarily understood—or the struggle is degrading.
The wider contact which marks modern life, the suppling of the
imagination which enables it to appreciate diverse phases of human
nature, the more instructed sense of justice, brings in a larger
good will which economizes personal hostility without necessarily
diminishing opposition. In primitive life the reaction of man against
man is crude, impulsive, wasteful. Violent anger is felt against the
opponent as a whole and expressed by a general assault. Civilized man,
trained to be more discriminating, strikes at tendencies rather than
persons, and avoids so far as possible hostile emotion, which he finds
painful and exhausting. As an opponent he is at once kinder and more
formidable than the savage.
Perhaps the most urgent need of the present time, so far as regards
the assuaging of antipathy, is some clearer consciousness of what may
be called, in the widest sense, the rules of the game; that is, for
accepted ideals of justice which conscience and public opinion may
impose upon reasonable men, and law upon the unreasonable. In the
lack of clear notions of right and duty the orderly test of strength
degenerates into a scuffle, in which the worst passions are released
and low forms of power tend to prevail—just as brutal and tricky
methods prevail in ill-regulated sports. We need a popular ethics which
is at once Christian and evolutionary, recognizing unity of spirit
alongside of diversity of standpoint; a coöperative competition, giving
each individual, group or race a fair chance for higher self-assertion
under conditions so just as to give the least possible occasion for
ill-feeling. Something of this sort is in fact the ideal in accordance
with which modern democracy hopes to reconstruct a somewhat disordered
world.
There is a French maxim, much quoted of late, to the effect that to
understand all is to pardon all: all animosity, as some interpret
this, is a mistake; when we fully understand we cease to blame. This,
however, is only a half-truth, and becomes a harmful fallacy when it
is made to stand for the whole. It is true that if we wholly lose
ourselves in another’s state of mind blame must disappear: perhaps
nothing is felt as wrong by him who does it at the very instant it is
done. But this is more than we have a right to do: it involves that we
renounce our moral individuality, the highest part of our being, and
become a mere intelligence. The fact that every choice is natural to
the mind that chooses does not make it right.
The truth is that we must distinguish, in such questions as this, two
attitudes of mind, the active and the contemplative, both natural and
having important functions, but neither by itself sufficient. Pure
contemplation sees things and their relations as a picture and with no
sense of better or worse; it does not care; it is the ideal of science
and speculative philosophy. If one could be completely in this state of
mind he would cease to be a self altogether. All active personality,
and especially all sense of right and wrong, of duty, responsibility,
blame, praise and the like, depend upon the mind taking sides and
having particular desires and purposes.
The unhappiness of bad men, maintained by Socrates, depends upon their
badness being brought home to them in conscience. If, because of their
insensibility or lack of proper reproof, the error of their way is not
impressed upon them, they have no motive to reform. The fact that the
evil-doer has become such gradually, and does not realize the evil in
him, is no reason why we should not blame him; it is the function of
blame to make him and others realize it, to define evil and declare it
in the sight of men. We may pardon the evil-doer when he is dead, or
has sincerely and openly repented, not while he remains a force for
wrong.
It seems that the right way lies between the old vindictiveness and
the view now somewhat prevalent that crime should be regarded without
resentment, quite like a disease of the flesh. The resentment of
society, if just and moderate, is a moral force, and definite forms of
punishment are required to impress it upon the general mind. If crime
is a disease it is a moral disease and calls for moral remedies, among
which is effective resentment. It is right that one who harms the state
should go to prison in the sight of all; but it is right also that all
should understand that this is done for the defence of society, and not
because the offender is imagined to be another kind of man from the
rest of us.
The democratic movement, insomuch as it feels a common spirit in all
men, is of the same nature as Christianity; and it is said with truth
that while the world was never so careless as now of the mechanism of
religion, it was never so Christian in feeling. A deeper sense of a
common life, both as incarnated in the men about us and as inferred in
some larger whole behind and above them—in God—belongs to the higher
spirit of democracy as it does to the teaching of Jesus.
He calls the mind out of the narrow and transient self of sensual
appetites and visible appurtenances, which all of us in our awakened
moments feel to be inferior, and fills it with the incorrupt good of
higher sentiment. We are to love men as brothers, to fix our attention
upon the best that is in them, and to make their good our own ambition.
Such ideals are perennial in the human heart and as sound in psychology
as in religion. The mind, in its best moments, is naturally Christian;
because when we are most fully alive to the life about us the
sympathetic becomes the rational; what is good for you is good for me
because I share your life; and I need no urging to do by you as I would
have you do by me. Justice and kindness are matters of course, and also
humility, which comes from being aware of something superior to your
ordinary self. To one in whom human nature is fully awake “Love your
enemies and do good to them that despitefully use you” is natural and
easy, because despiteful people are seen to be in a state of unhappy
aberration from the higher life of kindness, and there is an impulse to
help them to get back. The awakened mind identifies itself with other
persons, living the sympathetic life and following the golden rule by
impulse.
To put it otherwise, Christ and modern democracy alike represent a
protest against whatever is dead in institutions, and an attempt
to bring life closer to the higher impulses of human nature. There
is a common aspiration to effectuate homely ideals of justice and
kindness. The modern democrat is a plain man and Jesus was another.
It is no wonder, then, that the characteristic thought of the day is
preponderantly Christian, in the sense of sharing the ideals of Christ,
and that in so far as it distrusts the Church it is on the ground that
the Church is not Christian enough.
But how far, after all, is this brotherly and peaceful sentiment,
ancient or modern, applicable to life as we know it? Is it feasible,
is it really right, is it not a sentiment of submission in a world
that grows by strife? After what has already been said on this, it
is perhaps enough to add here that neither in the life of Christ nor
in modern democracy do we find sanction for submission to essential,
moral wrong. Christ brought a sword which the good man of our day
can by no means sheathe: his counsels of submission seem to refer to
merely personal injuries, which it may be better to overlook in order
to keep the conflict on a higher plane. If we mean by Christianity an
understanding and brotherly spirit toward all men and a reverence
for the higher Life behind them, expressed in an infinite variety of
conduct according to conditions, it would seem to be always right, and
always feasible, so far as we have strength to rise to it.
The most notable reaction of democracy upon religious sentiment is no
doubt a tendency to secularize it, to fix it upon human life rather
than upon a vague other world. So soon as men come to feel that society
is not a machine, controlled chiefly by the powers of darkness, but an
expression of human nature, capable of reflecting whatever good human
nature can rise to; so soon, that is, as there comes to be a public
will, the religious spirit is drawn into social idealism. Why dream of
a world to come when there is hopeful activity in this? God, it seems,
is to be found in human life as well as beyond it, and social service
is a method of his worship. “If ye love not your brother whom ye have
seen, how can ye love God whom ye have not seen?”
An ideal democracy is in its nature religious, and its true sovereign
may be said to be the higher nature, or God, which it aspires to
incarnate in human institutions.
FOOTNOTES:
[94] Page 55.
[95] Jane Addams, Democracy and Social Ethics, 275.
[96] Quoted in The Commons, October, 1903.
[97] Dante, Purgatorio, 15, 55-57. He is speaking of Paradise.
[98] Longfellow’s Translation.
[99] Jane Addams, Democracy and Social Ethics, 272.
[100] Leaves of Grass (1884), page 9.
[101] _Idem_, 59.
[102] _Idem_, 48.
[103] _Idem_, 48.
[104] _Idem_, 110.
[105] Arthur H. Smith, Chinese Characteristics, 181.
_PART IV_
SOCIAL CLASSES
CHAPTER XVIII
THE HEREDITARY OR CASTE PRINCIPLE
NATURE AND USE OF CLASSES—INHERITANCE AND COMPETITION THE TWO
PRINCIPLES UPON WHICH CLASSES ARE BASED—CONDITIONS IN HUMAN NATURE
MAKING FOR HEREDITARY CLASSES—CASTE SPIRIT.
Speaking roughly, we may call any persistent social group, other than
the family, existing within a larger group, a class. And every society,
except possibly the most primitive, is more or less distinctly composed
of classes. Even in savage tribes there are, besides families and
clans, almost always other associations: of warriors, of magicians and
so on; and these continue throughout all phases of development until
we reach the intricate group structure of our own time. Individuals
never achieve their life in separation, but always in coöperation with
a group of other minds, and in proportion as these coöperating groups
stand out from one another with some distinctness they constitute
social classes.
We may say of this differentiation, speaking generally, that it is
useful. The various functions of life require special influences
and organization, and without some class spirit, some speciality
in traditions and standards, nothing is well performed. Thus, if
our physicians were not, as regards their professional activities,
something of a psychological unit, building up knowledge and sentiment
by communication, desiring the approval and dreading the censure of
their colleagues, it would be worse not only for them but for the rest
of us. There are no doubt class divisions that are useless or harmful,
but something of this nature there should be, and I have already tried
to show that our own society suffers considerably from a lack of
adequate group differentiation in its higher mental activities.
Fundamental to all study of classes are the two principles, of
inheritance and of competition, according to which their membership
is determined. The rule of descent, as in the hereditary nobility of
England or Germany, gives a fixed system, the alternative to which is
some kind of selection—by election or appointment as in our politics;
by purchase, as formerly in the British army and navy; or by the
informal action of preference, opportunity and endeavor, as in the case
of most trades and professions at the present day.
Evidently these two principles are very much intermingled in their
working. The hereditary distinctions must have a beginning in some sort
of selective struggle, such as the military and commercial competition
from which privileged families have emerged in the past, and never
become so rigid as not to be modified by similar processes. On the
other hand, inherited advantages, even in the freest society, enter
powerfully into every kind of competition.
Another consideration of much interest is that the strict rule of
descent is a biological principle, making the social organization
subordinate to physical continuity of life, while selection or
competition brings in psychical elements, of the most various qualities
to be sure, but capable at the best of forming society on a truly
rational method.
Finally it is well to recognize that there is a vast sum of influences
governed by no ascertainable principle at all, which go to assign
the individual his place in the class system. After allowing for
inheritance and for everything which can fairly be called selection
(that is, for all definite and orderly interaction between the man and
the system), there remains a large part which can be assigned only to
chance. This is particularly true in the somewhat tumultuous changes of
modern life.
When a class is somewhat strictly hereditary, we may call it a caste—a
name originally applied to the hereditary classes of India, but to
which it is common, and certainly convenient, to give a wider meaning.
Perhaps the best way to understand caste is to open our eyes and note
those forces at work among ourselves which might conceivably give rise
to it.
On every side we may see that differences arise, and that these tend
to be perpetuated through inherited associations, opportunities and
culture. The endeavor to secure for one’s children whatever desirable
thing one has gained for oneself is a perennial source of caste, and
this endeavor flows from human nature and the moral unity of the
family. If a man has been able to save money, he anxiously invests it
to yield an income after his death; if he has built up a business,
it is his hope that his children may succeed him in it; if he has a
good handicraft, he wishes his boys to learn it. And so with less
tangible goods—education, culture, religious and moral ideas—there is
no good parent but desires his children to have more than the common
inheritance of what is best in these things. It is, perhaps, safe to
say that if the good of his children could be set on one side and the
good of all the rest of the world over against it on the other, the
average parent would desire that evil might befall the latter rather
than the former. And much of the wider social spirit of recent times
comes from the belief that we cannot make this separation, and that
to secure the real good of our children we must work for the common
advancement.
That this endeavor to secure a succession in desirable function is
not confined to the rich we may see, for instance, in the fact that
labor unions often have regulations tending to secure to the children
of members a complete or partial monopoly of the opportunities of
apprenticeship. In Chicago, not long since, only the son of a plumber
could learn the plumber’s trade.
As being the actual possessor of the advantages in question, the
parent is usually in a position either to hand them over directly to
his children, or to make their acquisition comparatively easy. Wealth,
the most obvious and tangible source of caste, is transmissible,
even in the freest societies, under the sanction and protection of
law. And wealth is convertible not only into material goods but,
if the holder has a little tact and sense, into other and finer
advantages—educational opportunities, business and professional
openings, travel and intercourse with people of refinement and
culture. Against this we must, of course, offset the diminished motive
to exertion, the lack of rough-and-tumble experience, and other
disadvantages which inherited wealth, especially if large, is apt
to bring with it; but that it does, as a rule, perpetuate the more
conventional sorts of superiority is undeniable.
And such intangible advantages as culture, manners, good associations
and the like, whether associated with wealth or not, are practically
heritable, since they are chiefly derived by children from a social
environment determined by the personality and standing of their parents.
Indeed, irrespective of any intention toward or from inheritance, there
is a strong drift toward it due to mere familiarity. It is commonly the
line of least resistance. The father knows much about his own trade and
those closely related to it, little about others; and the son shares
his point of view. So when the latter comes to fix upon a career he
is likely, in the absence of any decided individuality of preference,
to take the way that lies most open to him. Of course he may lack the
ability to carry the paternal function; but this, though common enough,
does not affect the majority of cases. The functions that require
a peculiar type of natural ability, while of the first importance,
since they include all marked originality, are not very numerous,
sound character and training, with fair intelligence, being ordinarily
sufficient. Even in the learned professions, such as law, medicine,
teaching and the ministry, the great majority of practitioners hold
their own by common sense and assiduity rather than by special
aptitude. To the best of my observation, there are many men serving
as foremen in various sorts of handicraft, or as farmers, who have
natural capacity adequate for success in law, commerce or politics. A
man of good, all-round ability will succeed in that line of work which
he finds ready to his hand, but only a few will break away from their
antecedents and seek a wholly different line. And if their work affords
them health, thought and mastery, why should they wish to change it if
they could?
I would not have it supposed, however (because I dwell thus upon
opportunity), that I agree with those whose zeal for education and
training leads them to depreciate natural differences. I do not know
how to talk with men who believe in native equality: it seems to me
that they lack common sense and observation. How can they fail to
see that children in the same family, even twins, as Mr. Galton has
shown,[106] are often widely divergent in ability, one destined to
leadership and another to obscurity?
The two variables of personality, “nature and nurture,” are without
doubt of equal diversity and importance, and they must work together
to bring about any notable achievement. Natural ability is essential;
but, no matter how great, it cannot know or develop its power without
opportunity. Indeed, great natural faculty is often more dependent
on circumstance than is mediocrity—because of some trait, like
extreme sensitiveness, that unfits it for miscellaneous competition.
Opportunity, moreover, means different things in different cases, and
is not to be identified with wealth or facile circumstances of any
sort. Some degrees and kinds of difficulty are helpful, others not.
And yet, leaving out, on the one hand, unusual talent or energy,
and, on the other, decided weakness or dulness, the mass of men are
guided chiefly by early surroundings and training, which determine
for them, in a general way, what sort of life they will take up, and
contribute much to their success or failure in it. Society, even in a
comparatively free country, is thus vaguely divided into hereditary
strata or sections, from which the majority do not depart.
If the transmission of function from father to son has become
established, a caste spirit, a sentiment in favor of such transmission
and opposed to the passage from one class into another, may arise
and be shared even by the unprivileged classes. The individual then
thinks of himself and his family as identified with his caste, and
sympathizes with others who have the same feeling. The caste thus
becomes a psychical organism, consolidated by community of sentiment
and tradition. In some measure the ruling class in England, for
example, has hung together in this way, and the same is partly true
of the lower orders. No doubt there is generally some protest against
a hereditary system on the part of restless members of the lower
castes—certainly this was always the case in Europe—but it may be
practically insignificant.
And out of caste sentiment arise institutions, social, political and
economic—like the mediæval system in Europe, much of which still
survives—whose tendency is to define and perpetuate hereditary
distinctions.
I have, perhaps, said enough to make it clear that an impulse toward
caste is found in human nature itself. Whether it spreads through and
dominates the system of life, as in India, or remains subordinate, as
with us, depends upon the strength or weakness of other impulses which
limit its operation. As certain types of vegetation, like the ferns,
which at one time were dominant in the forests, are now overshadowed by
plants of higher organization, so caste, which we must, on the whole,
reckon to be an inferior principle, tends to be supplanted by something
freer and more rational.
FOOTNOTES:
[106] See the memoir on the subject in his Inquiries into Human Faculty.
CHAPTER XIX
CONDITIONS FAVORING OR OPPOSING THE GROWTH OF CASTE
THREE CONDITIONS AFFECTING THE INCREASE OR DIMINUTION OF CASTE—RACE
CASTE—IMMIGRATION AND CONQUEST—GRADUAL DIFFERENTIATION OF FUNCTIONS;
MEDIÆVAL CASTE; INDIA—INFLUENCE OF SETTLED CONDITIONS—INFLUENCE OF THE
STATE OF COMMUNICATION AND ENLIGHTENMENT—CONCLUSION.
There seem to be three conditions which, chiefly, make for the increase
or diminution of the caste principle. These are, first, likeness or
unlikeness in the constituents of the population; second, the rate
of social change (whether we have to do with a settled or a shifting
system), and, finally, the state of communication and enlightenment.
Unlikeness in the constituents, a settled system and a low state of
communication and enlightenment favor the growth of caste, and _vice
versa_. The first provides natural lines of cleavage and so makes it
easier to split into hereditary groups; the second gives inheritance
time to consolidate its power, while the third means the absence of
those conscious and rational forces which are its chief rivals.
The most important sorts of unlikeness in the constituents of the
population are perhaps three: differences in race; differences, apart
from race, due to immigration or conquest, and unlikeness due to
the gradual differentiation of social functions within a population
originally homogeneous.
Two races of different temperament and capacity, distinct to the eye
and living side by side in the same community, tend strongly to become
castes, no matter how equal the social system may otherwise be. The
difference, as being hereditary, answers in its nature to the idea of
caste, and the external sign serves to make it conscious and definite.
The race caste existing in the Southern United States illustrates the
impotence of democratic traditions to overcome the caste spirit when
fostered by obvious physical and psychical differences. This spirit is
immeasurably strong on the part of the whites, and there is no apparent
prospect of its diminution.
The specially caste nature of the division—as distinguished from those
personal differences which democratic tradition recognizes—is seen in
the feeling, universal among the whites, that the Negro must be held
apart and subordinate not merely as an individual, or any number of
individuals, but as a race, a social whole. That is, the fact that
many individuals of this race are equal, and some superior, to the
majority of whites does not, in the opinion of the latter, make it
just or expedient to treat them apart from the mass of their race. To
dine with a Negro, to work or play by his side, or to associate in any
relation where superiority cannot be asserted, is held to be degrading
and of evil example, no matter what kind of Negro he may be. It is the
practice and policy of the dominant race to impress upon the Negro
that he belongs by birth to a distinct order out of which he can in no
way depart. There or nowhere he must find his destiny. If he wishes to
mingle with whites it must be as an acknowledged inferior. As a servant
he may ride in the same railway car, but as a citizen he may not do so.
Thoughtful whites justify this attitude on the ground, substantially,
that a race _is_ an organic whole—bound together by heredity and social
connection—and that it is practically necessary to recognize this in
dealing with race questions. The integrity of the white race and of
white civilization, they say, requires Negro subordination (separation
being impracticable), and the only available line of distinction is
the definite one of color. A division on this line is even held to be
less invidious—as involving no judgment of individuals—as well as more
feasible, than one based on personal traits. Particular persons cannot,
in practice, be separated from their families and other antecedents,
and if they could be the example of mixture on an equal footing would
be demoralizing.
This argument is probably sound in so far as it requires the
recognition of the two races as being, for some purposes, distinct
organisms. In this regard it is perhaps better sociology than the
view that every one should be considered solely on his merits as an
individual.
At the same time it is only too apparent that our application of this
doctrine is deeply colored with that caste arrogance which does not
recognize in the Negro a spiritual brotherhood underlying all race
difference and possible “inferiority.” The matter of unequal ability,
in races as in individuals, is quite distinct from that sharing in
a common spirit and service from which no human being can rightly
or Christianly be excluded. The idea that he is fundamentally a man
like the rest of us cannot and should not be kept from the Negro any
more than from other lowly orders of people. Science, religion and the
democratic spirit all give him a right to it; and the white man cannot
deny it to him without being false to his own best self. Anything in
our present attitude which does deny it we must hope to be transitory,
since it is calculated, in a modern atmosphere, to generate continuing
disquiet and hatred. It belonged with slavery and is incongruous with
the newer world.
These may be subtleties, but subtlety is the very substance of the race
question, the most vital matter being not so much what is done as the
spirit in which it is done.
The practical question here is not that of abolishing castes but of
securing just and kindly relations between them, of reconciling the
fact of caste with ideals of freedom and right. This is difficult
but not evidently impossible, and a right spirit, together with a
government firmly repressive of the lower passions of both races,
should go far to achieve it. There seems to be no reason in the nature
of things why divergent races, like divergent individuals, should not
unite in a common service of the ideals to which all human nature bears
allegiance—I mean ideals of kindness, fair play and so on. And the
white man, in claiming superiority, assumes the chief responsibility
for bringing this state of things to pass.
When peoples of the same race mingle by migration, the effect, as
regards classes, depends chiefly on their states of civilization and
the character of the migration, as hostile or friendly. The peaceful
advent of kindred settlers, like the English immigrants to the United
States, creates no class divisions. If they differ in language and
customs, like the Germans, or are extremely poor and ignorant, like
many of the Irish, they are held apart for a time and looked down upon,
but as they establish themselves and gradually prove their substantial
equality with the natives, they may become indistinguishable from the
latter. Of recent years, however, the arrival by millions of peoples
somewhat more divergent—especially Italians, Slavs and Jews—has
introduced distinctions in which race as well as culture plays an
appreciable part.
Much depends, of course, upon the special character of the institutions
and traditions that thus come into contact. Some societies are rigid
and repellent in their structure, while others, like the United States,
are almost ideally constituted to invite and hasten assimilation.
Conquest has been one of the main sources of caste the world over.
The hostile tradition it leaves may continue indefinitely; servile
functions are commonly forced upon the conquered, and the consciousness
of superiority leads the conquerors to regard intermarriage as
shameful. A servile caste, strictly hereditary, existed even among
the primitive German tribes from which most of us are descended, and
intermarriage with freemen was severely punished. “The Lombard,” says
Mr. Gummere, “killed a serf who ventured to marry a free woman, ...
West Goths and Burgundians scourged and burnt them both, while the
Saxons punished an unequal marriage of any sort with death of man and
wife.”[107]
The unlikeness out of which caste grows may not be original, as in the
case of race difference or conquest, but may arise gradually by the
differentiation of a homogeneous people. Any distinct social group,
having its special group sympathies and traditions, has some tendency
to pass on its functions and ideas to the children of its members,
promoting association and intermarriage among them, and thus taking on
a caste character.
Accordingly, any increase in the complexity of social
functions—political, religious, military or industrial—such as
necessarily accompanies the enlargement of a social system, may have
a caste tendency, because it separates the population into groups
corresponding to the several functions; and this alone may without
doubt produce caste if the conditions are otherwise favorable.
Something of this sort seems to have followed upon the conquest by the
Germanic tribes of Roman territory, and the consequent necessity of
administering a more complex system than their own. As the new order
took shape it showed a tendency toward more definite inheritance of
rank and function than existed in the tribal society. This was due
partly, no doubt, to the influence of Roman traditions, but the very
nature of the civilization required it. That is, functions became
more diverse and of such a character as to separate the citizens into
distinct classes, the principal ones being warriors of various degrees
(combining military functions with the control of land), clergy,
artisans and peasants. The military and landholding class, uniting the
force of arms with that of wealth, naturally dominated the others;
the artisans, especially in the towns, maintained a free status which
served later as the nucleus of a democratic tendency; the peasants
became serfs. As the conditions did not permit organization on any free
or open principle—there being little facility of travel, diffusion
of knowledge or unfixed wealth—the hereditary principle naturally
prevailed. Only the clergy, monopolizing most of the knowledge
and communication of the time and fortified by celibacy against
inheritance, maintained a comparatively open organization. It is well
known that lands, and the local rule that went with them, held at first
as a personal trust, gradually became a family property, and we are
told that when the Emperor Conrad, in 1037, issued his edict making
chiefs hereditary in Italy, he only did for the south “by a single
stroke what gradual custom and policy had slowly procured for the
north.”[108] Offices, armorial devices and other privileges generally
followed the same course, and the servile status of serfs was also
transmitted to children.
The feudal system was based on inheritance of function, and had two
well-defined castes, the knightly, consisting originally of those whose
ability to maintain a horse and equipment placed them in the rank
of effective warriors, and the servile. Between these marriage was
impossible. Intercourse of any kind was scanty and, on the part of the
superior order, contemptuous. “A boy of knightly birth was reared in
ceremony. From his earliest childhood he learnt to look upon himself
and his equals as of a different degree and almost of a different
nature from his fellow creatures who were not of gentle condition.
Heraldic pride and the distinction of degree were among his first
impressions.”[109] Socially and psychologically the mediæval nobility
lived in their caste, not in the world at large. It was the sphere of
the social self; the knight looked to it and not to a general public
for sympathy and recognition: he was far closer in spirit to the
chivalry of hostile nations than to the commons of his own. But the
plain people were out of all this, and were regarded with a contempt
at least as great as that felt in our day for the Negro at the South.
The whole institution of chivalry, with its attendant ideas, ideals and
literature, was a thing of caste which recognized no common humanity in
the lower orders of society, and whatever it did for the world in the
way of developing the knightly ideal of valor, devotion and courtesy—an
ideal later transformed into that of the gentleman and now coming to
pervade all classes—was a product of caste spirit.
The feudal courts, large and small, the tournaments, festivals and
military expeditions, including the crusades, were facilities of
communication through which this caste, not only in single countries
but throughout Europe, was enabled to have a common thought and
sentiment.
Without doubt, however, the lower caste had also its unity and
organization, its group traditions, customs and standards; mostly
lost to us because they never achieved a literary record. This was an
inarticulate caste; but it is probable that village communities were
the spheres of a vigorous coöperative life in which the best traits of
human nature were fostered.
In India also the elaborate caste systems, although due in part
to conquest, seem also to have come about by the hardening of
occupation-classes. The priests, powerful because of their supposed
intercourse with superhuman powers, taught their mystic traditions
to their children and so built up a hereditary corporation, known,
finally, as the Brahman caste. The military caste was apparently formed
in a similar manner, while in industry “veneration for parental example
and the need of an exact transmission of methods”[110] rendered all
employments hereditary. In fact, says one writer, the caste system was
in its origin “simply an instinctive effort for the organization of
labor.”[111] In the case of so intricate a caste society as that of
India much may also be ascribed to the reaction of the theory upon the
system. When the idea that caste is natural had become prevalent and
sanctified, it tended to create caste where it would not otherwise have
existed.
A settled state of society is favorable, and change hostile, to
the growth of caste, because it is necessary that functions should
be continuous through several generations before the principle of
inheritance can become fixed. Whatever breaks up existing customs and
traditions tends to abolish hereditary privilege and throw men into a
rough struggle, out of which strong, coarse natures emerge as victors,
to found, perhaps, a new aristocracy. Thus the conquest of southern
Europe by northern tribes led to a period of somewhat confused
readjustment, in which men of natural power bettered their status. The
classes which emerged were as much the result of competition as derived
by inheritance from those of tribal society. And so the openness of
classes in our own day _may_ be due as much to confusion as to a
permanent decline in the caste principle.
That a low state of communication and of enlightenment are favorable
to caste, while intelligence—especially political intelligence—and
facility of intercourse antagonize it, becomes evident when we consider
what, psychologically speaking, caste is. It is an organization of the
social mind on a biological principle. That functions should follow
the line of descent instead of adjusting themselves to individual
capacity and preference, evidently means the subordination of reason to
convenience, of freedom to order. The ideal principle is not biological
but moral, based, that is, on the spiritual gifts of individuals
without regard to descent. Caste, then, is something which, we may
assume, will give way to this higher principle whenever the conditions
are such as to permit the latter to work successfully; and this will
be the case when the population is so mobilized by free training and
institutions that just and orderly selection is practicable.
The diffusion of intelligence, rapid communication, the mobilization
of wealth by means of money, and the like, mark the ascendency of the
human mind over material and biological conditions. Popular government
becomes possible, commercial and industrial functions—other things
equal—come under more open competition, and free personal development
of all sorts is fostered. The general sentiment also, perceiving
the superiority of free organization to caste, becomes definitely
hostile to the latter and antagonizes it by public educational and
other opportunities. The most effective agent in keeping classes
comparatively open is an adequate system of free training for the
young, tending to make all careers accessible to those who are
naturally fit for them. In so far as there is such a system early
education becomes a process of selection and discipline which permits
ability to serve its possessor and the world in its proper place.
In our own society—we may note in passing—this calls for a great
development of public education, especially in the way of trade schools
and the like, and also for an effective campaign against child-labor,
bad housing and whatever else shuts off opportunity.
But before this mobility is achieved, caste is perhaps the only
possible basis for an elaborate social structure; the main flow of
thought is then necessarily in local channels. The people cannot grasp
the life of which they are a part in any large way, or have a free
and responsible share in it, but are somewhat mechanically held in
place by habit and tradition. Those special relations to the system of
government, religion or industry which are implied in classes, since
they cannot be determined by rational selection, must be fixed in some
traditional way, and the most available is the inheritance of functions.
We may expect, then, that complex, stationary societies of low mental
organization will tend toward caste. That this is true, in a general
way, is shown by the prevalence of caste in Oriental nations to-day,
and in the later history of the great empires of antiquity. It goes
without saying that each society has its peculiarities which only
special study could elucidate.
FOOTNOTES:
[107] Germanic Origins, 154.
[108] Tout, The Empire and The Papacy, 59.
[109] Cornish, Chivalry, 183.
[110] Samuel Johnson, Oriental Religions, India, 241.
[111] _Ibid._
CHAPTER XX
THE OUTLOOK REGARDING CASTE
THE QUESTION—HOW FAR THE INHERITANCE PRINCIPLE ACTUALLY
PREVAILS—INFLUENCES FAVORING ITS GROWTH—THOSE ANTAGONIZING IT—THE
PRINCIPLES OF INHERITANCE AND EQUAL OPPORTUNITY AS AFFECTING SOCIAL
EFFICIENCY—CONCLUSION.
A very pertinent question is that of the part which the hereditary or
caste principle is likely to play in the coming life; whether it is
probable that caste, other than that due to race, will arise in modern
society; or that the hereditary principle will, to any degree, have
increased ascendency.
The answer should probably be that the principle is always powerful,
and may gain somewhat as conditions become more settled, but certainly
can never produce true caste in the modern world.
As regards the power, in general, of the inheritance tendency, I
have perhaps said enough already. The inheritance of property,
notwithstanding the perennial agitation of communism, is probably as
secure as any institution can be—because there is apparently nothing
practicable to take its place as a means to economic stability. And
with inheritance of property goes, in all prosperous countries, a class
of people who come without effort into wealth and all its advantages:
their number and riches are certainly on the rapid increase. The less
formal inheritance of culture, opportunity and position is equally
real.
As to occupation, even now a census would perhaps show that the
majority of young men follow that of their father, or one cognate
to it. Most farmers’ sons probably remain farmers (in spite of the
well-known drift to the towns), most mechanics’ sons become mechanics,
and a large proportion of the children of professional men enter the
professions. The child of a well-to-do parent is given, as a matter
of course, the education, often long and expensive, which is required
for entrance upon a profession, and is coming to be necessary also for
commerce. Not only this, but he is made to feel from childhood that
success in achieving a professional or business position is expected of
him; he _must_ get it or lose the respect of his family and friends.
In the majority of cases—though the minority on the other side is no
small one—these opportunities and incitements, together with the power
to wait and choose which judicious paternal support gives him, are
effective in drawing out his energies and directing them continuously
upon the desired point. Certainly they will not make a good lawyer or
a captain of industry out of a fool, nor will the lack of them keep
decisive natural ability from exercising these functions; but with the
common run of men, having fair capacity not very definitely inclined in
a special direction, they are potent. Paternal suggestion and backing
must be used with great discretion and often fail entirely, but no man
of the world, so far as I know, regards them as unimportant.
If we ask whether the influence of inheritance is likely to increase or
diminish, we find, on studying the situation as a whole, a conflict of
tendencies the precise outcome of which can only be guessed at.
As favoring the growth of the principle and the crystallization of
classes, we have chiefly two considerations: the probability of more
settled conditions, and the influence of that sharper differentiation
of functions which modern life involves.
Social change, as already pointed out, is a main force in breaking up
the inheritance of function, and to this must largely be attributed
the comparative weakness of the principle in the United States. The
changes incident to the settlement of a new country, coinciding with
those incident to an economic revolution, have set everything afloat
and brought in a somewhat confused and disorderly sort of competition.
Our cities, especially, are aggregates of immigrants, most of whom
have broken away from early associations, and a large part of whom are
performing functions unheard of by their fathers. It is hardly possible
that trades should become hereditary when most of them endure less than
one man’s lifetime. And something of the same uncertainty runs through
commerce and the professions.
Without predicting any great decline in the pace of invention, we
may yet expect that the next fifty years will see a great deal of
the consolidation that comes with maturity. The population will be
comparatively established, in place at least, and the forces making for
inheritance will have a chance to work. An immense body of transmitted
wealth will exist, and democratic influences will have all they can
do to keep it from generating an aristocratic spirit. Industries,
professions and trades can hardly fail to be more stable than they
have been, and the rural population, as always, will be a stronghold of
the forces that favor inheritance.
The sentiment of regard for ancestry, of which caste is the extreme
expression, is likely to increase in this and in all new countries.
As communities grow older the family line comes more and more under
public observation. It is _seen_, and displayed in memory, wherever any
sort of continuity is preserved, and, being seen, it is judged, and
the individual shares the credit or discredit of his kin. While this
influence is now weak in the United States, on the whole, and is almost
absent in the recent and confused life of our cities, it is gaining
rapidly wherever—as is generally the case in the East and Southeast
outside of large towns—the conditions are settled enough to make the
family as a whole a matter of observation. And there can be little
doubt that it is increasing in the West wherever it has a similar
chance.
In some ways this greater recognition of descent is wholesome. A sense
of being part of a kindred, of bearing the honor of a continuing group
as well as of a perishing individual, tends to make one a better man;
and from this point of view our somewhat disintegrated society might
well have more of it.
As to the sharper differentiation that goes with modern life, we
see it on all hands. The city is more clearly marked off from the
country, in its functions, and is itself broken up into quarters the
inhabitants of which have often little or no intercourse with those
of other quarters. Trades and professions subdivide into specialties,
and, a more elaborate training being demanded, it is more necessary
than formerly that a man should know from the start what he wants
to do and assiduously prepare himself to do it. Not forgetting that
there is another side to this, a side of unification implied in these
differences, one may yet say that in themselves they tend to separate
people more sharply into social groups which might conceivably become
hereditary.
The forces antagonizing inheritance of function come chiefly under two
heads, the opposition of ambitious young men and the general current of
democratic sentiment.
Caste means restriction of opportunity, and consequently lies across
the path of the most energetic part of the people. Its rule can prevail
only where individual self-assertion is restrained by ignorance and
formal institutions. Under our flexible modern conditions, it is safe
to say, no system can endure that does not make a point of propitiating
the formidable ambition of youth by at least an apparent freedom of
opportunity. Even the inheritance of property is constantly questioned
in the minds of the young, and nothing but the lack of a plausible
alternative prevents its being more seriously assailed. And since this
stronghold of inequality can hardly be shaken, there is all the more
demand that it be offset by opening every other kind of advantage,
especially in the way of education and training, to whomsoever may be
fit to profit by it.
Somewhat vaguer but perhaps even more effective than the resistance
of young men is the opposition of the general current of sentiment to
any growth of inheritance at the expense of opportunity. To abolish
extrinsic inequalities and give each a chance to serve all in his own
fit way, is undoubtedly the democratic ideal. In politics this is
expressed by doing away with hereditary privilege and basing everything
on popular suffrage; in education it is seeking an expression quite as
vital by striving to open to every one the training to any function
for which he may show fitness. But the spirit of unity and brotherhood
is far from satisfied with what has been achieved in these directions,
and aspires to bring home to every child that fair access to the fruits
of progress which, in spite of theoretical liberty, is now widely
lacking. It calls for _social_ democracy, the real presence of freedom
and justice in every fibre of the social fabric. To this spirit any
increase of the privileges, already unavoidably great, which come by
inheritance, is evidently hateful.
In America at least this sentiment is not that of a struggling lower
class but of, practically, the whole community. With reference to so
vital a part of our traditional ideal there are no classes; all the
people feel substantially alike; and there is no public purpose for
which wealth is so freely spent as in the support of institutions whose
purpose is to keep open the path of opportunity from any condition of
life to any other.
There is also, back of this sentiment, a belief that equal opportunity
makes for the general good, since that system of society =will= be most
efficient, other things equal, in which each individual is required to
prove that he has more fitness than others for his special function.
Every one can see, at times, the deteriorating effect of family
influence—as upon business establishments when a less competent son
succeeds his father, or upon military service, as in the British army
at the outbreak of the Boer war.
On the other hand, the results of a confused competition may be worse
than those of order, even if the latter rests upon an artificial
principle.
Thus it is said with some truth—and this is perhaps the most
considerable argument for caste in modern life—that a class having
hereditary wealth and position, like the English aristocracy, makes a
permanent channel for high traditions of culture and public service,
and that it is well to preserve such traditions even at the cost of a
somewhat exclusive order to contain and cherish them. De Tocqueville,
himself imbued with the best traditions of the old French aristocracy,
held this view, and ascribed the lack of intellectual distinction
in the America of his day largely to the fact that there was no
class “in which the taste for intellectual pleasures is transmitted
with hereditary fortune and leisure, and by which the labors of the
intellect are held in honor.”[112]
The answer, of course, is that there are other means than caste for
securing the continuity of special traditions, and, more particularly,
that voluntary associations are capable of supplanting inherited
wealth as channels of culture. In the various branches of science, for
example, we have vigorous and continuing groups, with plenty of _esprit
de corps_, by which the labors of the intellect are held in honor. If
libraries, associations and educational institutions can do this for
one phase of culture, why not for others?
It would be unfair, however, not to acknowledge that great services
are constantly rendered to society by persons whom inherited wealth
enables to devote themselves earlier and more independently to high
aims than would otherwise be possible. There is certainly something
favorable to originality in an inherited competence, without which
one is more apt to be coerced into seeking a kind of success already
in vogue, and so having a market value. And the movement to foster
originality by endowments depending upon merit rather than birth will
be most difficult to make effectual, since such endowments almost
inevitably fall into the control of an institutional sort of men who
cannot be expected to subsidize heresy. Funds for this purpose will
probably aid only those sorts of originality already recognized, and in
a manner established; not the radical innovations from which important
movements usually start. It is hard to see how they can do much outside
of experimental science, in which there is a sort of conventional test
of originality.
On the whole, whatever is good in the principle of descent may be
appropriated by a democratic society without going back to formal
rank or exclusive opportunity. Freedom offers no bar to continuity of
function in the family, so long as efficiency is maintained, but merely
requires this, like everything else, to meet the test of service. There
is no adequate reason why a hereditary group, transmitting special
culture and fitness, should not continue their functions under a
democratic system—as is actually the case to a certain extent with the
political families of England. They will do their work all the better
for not being too sure of their position. I see nothing but good in
the fact that a military career has become traditional in a number of
American families who have rendered distinguished service of this sort.
The more special family ambitions we have, of a noble kind, the better
for the country.
No sober observer will imagine that the opposing forces are to abolish
the power of inheritance; they merely set reasonable limits to its
scope. When the way of ambition is opened to the most energetic
individuals, the sharpest teeth of discontent are drawn, and the mass
of men very willingly avoid trouble to themselves and to society by
keeping on in the paternal road. The family is after all too natural
and too convenient a channel of social continuity not to play a great
part in every phase of organization, and there seems little reason to
depart from the opinion of Comte that it must ordinarily be the main
influence in determining occupation.
I am inclined to expect that, owing to somewhat more settled conditions
of life, inheritance of function will be rather more common, and the
tendency to see the individual as one of a stock rather greater, in
the future than in the immediate past. On the other hand it is nearly
certain that educational opportunities will become more open and
varied, making it easier than now for special aptitude to find its
place. These things are not inconsistent, and both will make for order
and contentment.
Also much more endeavor will be directed to the welfare of the less
privileged classes as classes—that is, of those who are content to
remain in the ancestral status instead of trying to get into one more
favored. Heretofore we have given too much thought, relatively, to the
one man who aims at distinction, and too little to the ninety and nine
who do not.
FOOTNOTES:
[112] Democracy in America, vol. i, chap. 3.
CHAPTER XXI
OPEN CLASSES
THE NATURE OF OPEN CLASSES—WHETHER CLASS-CONSCIOUSNESS IS
DESIRABLE—FELLOWSHIP AND COÖPERATION DEFICIENT IN OUR SOCIETY—CLASS
ORGANIZATION IN RELATION TO FREEDOM.
With the growth of freedom classes come to be more open, that is,
more based on individual traits and less upon descent. Competition
comes actively into play and more or less efficiently fulfils its
function[113] of assigning to each one an appropriate place in the
whole. The theory of a free order is that every one is born to serve
mankind in a certain way, that he finds out through a wise system of
education and experiment what that way is, and is trained to enter upon
it. In following it he does the best possible both for the service of
society and his own happiness. So far as classes exist they are merely
groups for the furtherance of efficiency through coöperation, and their
membership is determined entirely by natural fitness.
This ideal condition is never attained on a large scale. In practice
the men who find work exactly suited to them and at the same time
acceptable to society are at the best somewhat exceptional—though habit
reconciles most of us—and classes are never wholly open or wholly
devoted to the general good.
The problem of finding where men belong, of adapting personal gifts to
a complex system, is indeed one of extreme difficulty, and is in no
way solved by facile schemes of any sort. There are, fundamentally,
only two principles available to meet it, that of inheritance or
caste and that of competition. While the former is a low principle,
the latter is also, in many of its phases, objectionable, involving
waste of energy and apt to degenerate into anarchy. There are always
difficulties on either hand, and the actual organization of life
is ever a compromise between the aspiration toward freedom and the
convenience of status.
We may assume, then, that in contemporary life we have to do with a
society in which the constitution of classes, so far as we have them,
is partly determined by inheritance and partly by a more or less open
competition, which is, again, more or less effective in placing men
where they rightly belong.
If classes are open and men make their way from one into another, it
is plain that they cannot be separate mental wholes as may be the
case with castes. The general state of things becomes one of facile
intercourse, and those who change class will not forget the ideas
and associations of youth. Non-hereditary classes may have plenty
of solidarity and class spirit—consider, for instance, the mediæval
clergy—and their activity may also be of a special and remote sort,
like that of an astronomical society, but after all there will be
something democratic about them; they will share the general spirit of
the whole in which they are rooted. They mean only specialization in
consciousness, where caste means separation.
The question whether there is or ought to be “class-consciousness”
in a democratic society is a matter of definitions. If we mean a
division of feeling that goes deeper than the sense of national unity
and separates the people into alien sections, then there is no such
thing in the United States on any important scale (leaving aside the
race question), and we may hope there never will be. But if we mean
that along with an underlying unity of sentiment and ideals there
are currents of thought and feeling somewhat distinct and often
antagonistic, the answer is that class-consciousness in this sense
exists and is more likely to increase than to diminish. A country of
newspapers, popular education and manhood suffrage has passed the stage
in which sentiments or interests can flow in separate channels; but
there is nothing to prevent the people forming self-assertive groups in
reference to economic and social questions, as they do in politics.
Class-consciousness along these lines will probably increase with
growing interest in the underlying controversies, but I do not
anticipate that this increase will prove the dreadful thing which some
imagine. A “class-war” would indeed be a calamity, but why expect it?
I see no reason unless it be a guilty conscience or an unbelief in
moral forces. A certain sort of agitators expect and desire a violent
struggle, because they see privilege defiant and violence seems to
them the shortest way to get at it; and on the other hand, there are
many in the enjoyment of privilege who feel in their hearts that they
deserve nothing better than to have it taken away from them: but these
are naïve views that ignore the solidity of the present order, which
ensures that any change must be gradual and make its way by reason.
Orderly struggle is the time-honored method of adjusting controversies
among a free people, and why should we assume that it will degenerate
into anarchy and violence at just this point? Will not feeling be
rather better than worse when a vague sense of injustice has had a
chance to try itself out in a definite and positive self-assertion?
It is to be remembered, moreover, that in a society where groups
interlace as much as they do with us a conflict of class interests is,
in great degree, not a conflict of persons but rather one of ideas in a
common social medium—since many persons belong to more than one class.
Only under conditions of caste would a class war of the sort predicted
by some theorists be likely to come to pass. I am not sure that it
would be more fantastic to expect a literal war between Democrats and
Republicans than between the parties—hardly less united by common
social and economic interests—of Labor and Capital.
It seems equally mistaken to say, on the one hand, that all
class-consciousness is bad, or, on the other, that we ought above
all things to gird ourselves for the class-struggle. The just view
apparently is that we should have in this matter, as elsewhere,
difference on a basis of unity. Class loyalty in the pursuit of right
ends is good; but like all such sentiments it should be subordinate to
a broad justice and kindness. If there is no class-consciousness men
become isolated, degraded and ineffective; if there is too much, or the
wrong kind, the group becomes separate and forgets the whole. Let there
be “diversities of gifts but the same spirit.”
The present state of things as regards fellowship and coöperation
in special groups is, on the whole, one of deficiency rather than
excess. The confusion or “individualism” that we see in literature,
art, religion and industry means a want of the right kind of class
unity and spirit. There is a lack of mutual aid and support not only
among hand-workers, where it is much needed, but also among scholars,
artists, professional men, writers and men of affairs. The ordinary
business or professional man hardly feels himself a member of any
brotherhood larger than the family; with his wife and children about
him he stands in the midst of a somewhat cold and jostling world,
keeping his feet as best he can and seeking a mechanical security in
bank-account and life insurance—being less fortunate in this regard,
perhaps, than the trades-unionist, who has been forced by necessity to
stand shoulder-to-shoulder with his fellows and give and take sacrifice
for the common good. And much the same is true of scholars and artists:
they are likely not to draw close enough together to keep one another
warm and foster the class ideals which lead the individual on to a
particular kind of efficiency: there is a lack of those snug nests of
special tradition and association in which more settled civilizations
are rich.
Organization, of certain kinds, is no doubt more extensive and
elaborate than ever before, and organization, it may be said, involves
the interdependence, the unity, of parts. But will this be a conscious
and moral unity? In a high kind of organization it will; but rapid
growth may give us a system that is mechanical rather than, in the
higher sense, social. When organization quickly extends there is a
tendency to lower its type, as a rubber band becomes thinner the more
you stretch it; the relations grow less human, and so may degrade
instead of elevating the individual’s relation to his whole. In a
measure this has taken place in our life. The vast structure of
industry and commerce remains, for the most part, unhumanized, and
whether it proves a real good or not depends upon our success or
failure in making it vital, conscious, moral. There is union on a low
plane and isolation on a higher. The progress of communication has
supplied the mechanical basis for a spiritual organization far beyond
anything in the past; but this remains unachieved. On the whole, in the
words of Miss Jane Addams, with whom this is a cherished idea, “The
situation demands the consciousness of participation and well-being
which comes to the individual when he is able to see himself ‘in
connection and coöperation with the whole’; it needs the solace of
collective art inherent in collective labor.”[114]
It is indeed probable that the growth of class fellowship will help to
foster that spirit of art in work which we so notably lack, and the
repose and content which this brings. There is truth in the view that a
confused and standardless competition destroys art, which requires not
only a group ideal but a certain deliberation, a chance to brood over
things and work perfection into them. When the workman is more sure of
his position, when he feels his fellows at his shoulder and knows that
the quality of his work will be appreciated, he will have more courage
and patience to be an artist. We all draw our impulse toward perfection
not from vulgar opinion or from our pay, but from the approval of
fellow craftsmen. The truth, little seen in our day, is that all work
should be done in the spirit of art, and that no society is humanly
organized in which this is not chiefly the case.
It is also true that closer fellowship—dominated by good ideals—should
bring the sympathetic and moral motives to diligence and efficiency
into more general action, and relegate the ‘work or starve’ motive
more to the background. Some of us love our work and are eager to
do it well; others have to be driven. Is this because the former
are naturally a superior sort of people, because the work itself is
essentially more inviting, or because the social conditions are such
that sympathy and fellowship are more enlisted with it? Allowing
something for the first two, I suspect the third is the principal
reason. What work is there that would not be pleasant in moderate
quantities, in good fellowship, and in the feeling of service? No great
proportion, I imagine, of our task. Washing dishes is not thought
desirable, and yet men do it joyfully when they go camping together.
Class organization is not, as some people assert, necessarily hostile
to freedom. All organization is, properly, a means through which
freedom is sought. As conditions change, men are compelled to find new
forms of union through which to express themselves, and the rise of
industrial classes is of this nature.
In fact, the question of freedom, as applied to class conditions, has
two somewhat distinct aspects. These are:
1. Freedom to rise from one class into another, freedom of individual
opportunity, or _carrière ouverte aux talents_. This is chiefly for the
man of exceptional capacity and ambition. It is important, but not
more so than the other, namely:
2. Freedom of classes, or, what is the same thing, of those individuals
who have not the wish or power to depart from the sphere of life in
which circumstance has placed them. It means justice, opportunity,
humane living, for the less privileged groups as groups; not
opportunity to get out of them but to be something in them; a chance
for the teamster to have comfort, culture and good surroundings for
himself and his family without ceasing to be a teamster.
The first of these has been much better understood in America than the
second. That it is wrong to keep a man down who might rise is quite
familiar, but that those who cannot rise, or do not care to, have also
just claims is almost a novel idea, though they are evidently that
majority for whom our institutions are supposed to exist. Owing to a
too exclusive preoccupation with ideals of enterprise and ambition,
a certain neglect, and even reproach, have rested upon those who do
quietly the plain work of life.
Ours, if you think of it, is rather too much success on the tontine
plan, where one puts all he has into a pool in the hope of being one of
a few survivors to get what the rest lose; it would be better to take
to heart that idea of Emerson’s that each may succeed in his own way,
without putting others down. It is a great thing that every American
boy may aspire to be president of the United States, or of the Standard
Oil Company, but it is equally important that he should have a chance
for full and wholesome life in the more probable condition of clerk or
mill hand. While we must admire the heroes of Samuel Smiles, we may
remember that they do and should constitute only a small minority of
the human race.
And the main guaranty for freedom of this latter sort is some kind of
class organization which shall resist the encroachment and neglect of
which the weaker parties in society are in constant danger. Those who
have wealth, position, knowledge, leisure, may perhaps dispense with
formal organization (though in fact it is those who are strong already
who most readily extend their strength in this way), but the multitudes
who have nothing but their human nature to go upon must evidently stand
together or go to the wall.
FOOTNOTES:
[113] I make frequent use of this word to mean an activity which
furthers some general interest of the social group. It differs from
“purpose” in not necessarily implying intention.
[114] Democracy and Social Ethics, 219.
CHAPTER XXII
HOW FAR WEALTH IS THE BASIS OF OPEN CLASSES
IMPERSONAL CHARACTER OF OPEN CLASSES—VARIOUS CLASSIFICATIONS—CLASSES,
AS COMMONLY UNDERSTOOD, BASED ON OBVIOUS DISTINCTIONS—WEALTH AS
GENERALIZED POWER—ECONOMIC BETTERMENT AS AN IDEAL OF THE ILL-PAID
CLASSES—CONCLUSION.
Where classes do not mean separate currents of thought, as in the
case of caste, but are merely differentiations in a common mental
whole, there are likely to be several kinds of classes overlapping one
another, so that men who fall in the same class from one point of view
are separated in another. The groups are like circles which, instead of
standing apart, interlace with one another so that several of them may
pass through the same individual. Classes become numerous and, so to
speak, impersonal; that is, each one absorbs only a part of the life of
the individual and does not sufficiently dominate him to mould him to a
special type. This is one of the things that distinguish our American
order from that, say, of Germany, where caste is still so dominant as
to carry many other differences with it and create unmistakable types
of men. As a newspaper writer puts it, “The one thing we may be sure of
every day is that not a man whom we shall meet in it will belong to his
type. The purse-proud aristocrat turns out to be a humble-minded young
fellow anxiously envious of our knowledge of golf; the comic actor in
private life is dull and shy, and reddens to the tips of his ears when
he speaks; the murderer taken out of the dock in a quiet hob-and-nob
turns out to be a likable young chap who reminds you of your cousin
Bob.”
And this independence of particular classes should give one the more
opportunity to achieve a truly personal individuality by combining a
variety of class affiliations, each one suited to a particular phase of
his character.
It is, then, easy to see why different classifiers discover different
class divisions in our society, according to their points of view;
namely, because there are in fact an indefinite number of possible
collocations. This would not have been the case anywhere in the Middle
Ages, nor is it nearly as much the case in England at the present time
as in the United States.
We might, to take three of the most conspicuous lines of division,
classify the people about us according to trade or profession,
according to income, and according to culture. The first gives us
lawyers, grocers, plumbers, bankers and the like, and also, more
generally, the hand-laboring class, skilled and unskilled, the
mercantile class, the professional class and the farming class. The
division by income is, of course, related to this, though by no
means identical. We might reckon paupers, the poor, the comfortable,
the well-to-do and the rich. Culture and refinement have with us no
very close or essential connection with occupation or wealth, and
a classification based upon the former would show a very general
rearrangement. There are many scholars and philosophers among us who,
like Thoreau, follow humble trades and live upon the income of day
labor.
And virtue, the most important distinction of all, is independent alike
of wealth, calling and culture. The real upper class, that which is
doing the most for the onward movement of human life, is not to be
discerned by any visible sign. The more inward or spiritual a trait is,
the less it is dependent upon what are ordinarily understood as class
distinctions.
It is, however, upon the grosser and more obvious differences of wealth
and rank, and not upon intellectual or moral traits, that classes,
in the ordinary meaning of the word, are based. The reasons for this
are, first, that something obvious and unquestionable is requisite as
a symbol and unfailing mark of class, and, second, that the tangible
distinctions alone are usual matters of controversy. Culture and
character have more intrinsic importance, but are too uncertain to mark
a class, and even if they were stamped upon the forehead they are not
matter to quarrel over like wealth or titles; since those who have them
not cannot hope to get them by depriving those who have.
Income, for instance, classifies people through creating different
standards of living, those who fall into the same class in this respect
being likely to adopt about the same external mode of life. It usually
decides whether men live in one quarter of the city or another, what
sort of houses or apartments they inhabit, how they dress, whether
the wife “does all her own work” or employs household help (and, if
the latter, how much and of what sort), whether they keep a carriage,
whether they go into the country for the summer, whether they travel
abroad, whether they send their sons to college, and so on. And such
likeness leads to likeness of ideas, especially in that commonplace
sort of people—the most numerous of course—who have not sufficient
definiteness or energy of character to associate on any other basis.
Note how difficult it is for two people, congenial in other respects,
to converse freely when one has an income of $5,000, the other of $500.
Few topics can be touched upon without accentuating the superficial
but troublesome discrepancy. Amusements, household and the like are
hardly possible; the weather may supply a remark or two, perhaps also
politics, though here the economic point of view is likely to appear.
Religion or philosophy, if the parties could soar so high, would be
best of all. Of course, serious discussion should be all the more
practicable and fruitful because of difference of viewpoint. What I
mean, however, is light, offhand, sociable talk that does not stir any
depths. As between their wives the situation would be harder still, and
only an unusual tact and magnanimity would make it tolerable.
The result is that we ordinarily find it most comfortable to associate
on a basis of income, combined with and modified by the influence of
occupation, culture and special tastes. And yet to do this is perhaps
a confession of failure, a confession that we do not know how to cast
off the adventitious and meet as men. The most superficial differences,
being the most apparent, impose themselves upon our commonly indolent
and sensuous states of mind.
In proportion to their energy men will always seek power. It is,
perhaps, the deepest of instincts, resting directly on the primary need
for self-expression. But the kind of power sought will take many forms.
Wealth stands, in modern society, for nearly all the grosser and
more tangible forms; for power over material goods, primarily, and
secondarily over the more purchasable kinds of human activity—hand
labor, professional services, newspaper commendation, political
assiduity and so on. The class that has it is, in all such matters, the
strong class, and naturally our coarser thought concludes that this is
the kind of power most worth consideration. In all the obvious details
of life, in that seeking for petty advantages and immunities in which
most of our time is passed, at the store or the railway station, we are
measured by money and are apt to measure others so. The ascendency of
wealth is too natural to disappear. Children prize possessions before
they can talk, and readily learn that money is possession generalized.
Indeed, only the taste for finer possessions can or should drive out
that for lower.
And yet all clear minds, or rather all minds in their clearer moments,
may see that wealth is not the chief good that the commonplace and
superficial estimate makes it. It is simply a low form of power,
important in measure to the group and to the individual, but easily
preoccupying the mind beyond its just claim. If society gets material
prosperity too fast, its spiritual life suffers, as is somewhat the
case in our day: and the individual is in peril of moral isolation and
decay as soon as he seeks to get richer than his fellows.
The finest and, in the long run, the most influential minds, have for
the most part not cared for riches, or not cared enough to go out of
their way to seek them, preferring to live on bare necessities if
they must rather than spend their lives in an uncongenial scramble.
And the distinctively spiritual leaders have always regarded them as
inconsistent with their aims. “Provide neither gold, nor silver, nor
brass in your purses, nor scrip for your journey, neither two coats,
neither shoes, nor yet staves.” Not that Christianity is opposed to
industrial prosperity—the contrary is the case—but that Christian
leadership required the explicit renunciation of prosperity’s besetting
sin. In our day the life of Thoreau, among others, illustrates how
a man may have the finer products of wealth—the culture of all
times—while preferring to remain individually poor. He held that for an
unmarried student, wishing first of all to preserve the independence of
his mind, occasional day labor, which one can do and have done with,
is the best way of getting a living. “A man is rich in proportion to
the number of things which he can afford to let alone.” “It makes but
little difference whether you are committed to a farm or the county
jail.”[115] The thoroughgoing way in which this doctrine is developed
in his Walden and other books makes them a _vade mecum_ for the
impecunious idealist.
Professor William James asserts that the prevalent fear of poverty
among the educated classes is the worst moral disease from which
civilization suffers, paralyzing their ideal force. “Think of the
strength which personal indifference to poverty would give us if we
were devoted to unpopular causes. We need no longer hold our tongues
or fear to vote the revolutionary or reformatory ticket. Our stocks
might fall, our hopes of promotion vanish, our salaries stop, our club
doors close in our faces; yet, while we lived, we would imperturbably
bear witness to the spirit, and our example would help to set free our
generation.”[116]
If these considerations do not keep us from greed, it is because most
of us have only flashes of the higher ambition. We may believe that we
could reconcile ourselves to poverty if we had to—even that it might be
good for us—but we do our best to avoid it.
For the ill-paid classes, certainly, the desire for money does not
mean “materialism” in any reproachful sense, but is chiefly the means
by which they hope to realize, first, health and decency, and then
a better chance at the higher life—books, leisure, education and
refinement. They are necessarily materialized in a certain sense by
the fact that their most strenuous thought must be fixed upon work and
product in relation to material needs. It is in those who are already
well-to-do that the preoccupation with money is most degrading—as not
justified by primary wants. “Meat is sweetest when it is nearest the
bone,” and it is good to long and strive for money when you have an
urgent human need for it; but to do this for accumulation, luxury, or a
remote security is not wholesome. This cold-blooded storing up in banks
and tin boxes is perilous to the soul, often becoming a kind of secret
vice, a disease of narrow minds, feeble imaginations and contracted
living.[117]
In modern life, then, and in a country without formal privilege, the
question of classes is practically one of wealth, and of occupation
considered in relation to wealth; the reason being not that this
distinction really dominates life, but that it is the focus of the
more definite and urgent class controversies. Other aims are pursued
in peace; wealth, because it is material and appropriable, involves
conflict. We may then accept the economic standpoint for this purpose
without at all agreeing with those who regard it as more fundamental
than others.[118]
FOOTNOTES:
[115] Walden, 89, 91.
[116] The Varieties of Religious Experience, 368.
[117] I will not here discuss the question just how far it serves a
useful purpose in the economic system.
[118] If the reader cares to know my opinion of that doctrine—sometimes
called the economic interpretation of history—which teaches that
economic conditions are in a peculiar sense the primary and determining
factor in society, he will find it in the following passages:
“The organic view of history [which I hold] denies that any factor
or factors are more ultimate than others. Indeed it denies that the
so-called factors—such as the mind, the various institutions, the
physical environment and so on—have any real existence apart from a
total life in which all share in the same way that the members of
the body share in the life of the animal organism. It looks upon
mind and matter, soil, climate, flora, fauna, thought, language and
institutions as aspects of a single rounded whole, one total growth.
We may concentrate attention upon some one of these things, but this
concentration should never go so far as to overlook the subordination
of each to the whole, or to conceive one as precedent to others.”
“I cannot see that the getting of food, or whatever else the economic
activities may be defined to be, is any more the logical basis of
existence than the ideal activities. It is true that there could be no
ideas and institutions without a food supply; but no more could we get
food if we did not have ideas and institutions. All work together, and
each of the principal functions is essential to every other.”
“History is not like a tangled skein which you may straighten out
by getting hold of the right end and following it with sufficient
persistence. It has no straightness, no merely lineal continuity, in
its nature. It is a living thing, to be known by sharing its life,
very much as you know a person. In the organic world—that is to say in
real life—each function is a centre from which causes radiate and to
which they converge; all is alike cause and effect; there is no logical
primacy, no independent variable, no place where the thread begins. As
in the fable of the belly and the members, each is dependent upon all
the others. You must see the whole or you do not truly see anything.”
(Publications of the American Economic Association, Third Series, vol.
v, 426 _ff._)
CHAPTER XXIII
ON THE ASCENDENCY OF A CAPITALIST CLASS
THE CAPITALIST CLASS—ITS LACK OF CASTE SENTIMENT—IN WHAT SENSE
“THE FITTEST”—MORAL TRAITS—HOW FAR BASED ON SERVICE—AUTOCRATIC
AND DEMOCRATIC PRINCIPLES IN THE CONTROL OF INDUSTRY—REASONS FOR
EXPECTING AN INCREASE OF THE DEMOCRATIC PRINCIPLE—SOCIAL POWER
IN GENERAL—ORGANIZING CAPACITY—NATURE AND SOURCES OF CAPITALIST
POWER—POWER OVER THE PRESS AND OVER PUBLIC SENTIMENT—UPPER-CLASS
ATMOSPHERE.
Since in our age commerce and industry absorb most of the practical
energy of the people, the men that are foremost in these activities
have a certain ascendency, similar to that of warriors in a military
age.
Although this sort of men is not sharply marked off, it is well enough
indicated by the term capitalist or capitalist-manager class; the large
owner of capital being usually more or less of a manager also, while
the large salaries and other gains of successful managers soon make
them capitalists.
It is not quite accurate to speak of the group in question as the
rich, because, at a given time, a large part of its most vigorous
membership is as yet without wealth—though in a way to get it—and, on
the other hand, many of the actual possessors of wealth are personally
idle or ineffective. The essential thing is a social tendency or
system of ideas generated in the accumulation of wealth and having for
its nucleus the more active and successful leaders of commerce and
industry.
That these are a very small class in proportion to their power is
apparent, but not, perhaps, in itself, so fatal a defect in the system
that permits it as many imagine. In so far as concentration of control
means that wealth is in the hands of those who understand how to use
it for the common good, and do in fact so use it, much may be said in
its favor. We are all eager to entrust our property to those who will
make it profitable to us; and society, under any system that could be
devised, must probably do the same. But we may well ask whether there
is not some more adequate means than we now have of getting this trust
faithfully executed.
For better or for worse, concentration is probably inevitable in any
society that has a vast, mobile wealth subject to competition; and the
actual inequality is perhaps not much greater than that of political
power, which is supposed to be equally distributed by general suffrage.
The truth is that equality of power or influence, in any sphere of
life, is inconsistent with the free working of human forces, which is
ever creating differences, some of which are useful to society and some
harmful. A true freedom, a reasonable equality, aims to conserve the
former and abolish or limit the latter.
The sentiment of the class is not aristocratic in the ordinary sense.
Although its members endeavor to secure their possessions to their
children, there is little of the spirit of hereditary caste, which,
indeed, is uncongenial to commerce. Freedom of opportunity is the ideal
in this as in other parts of American society, and educational or
other opportunities designed to maintain or increase it are sincerely
approved and supported. There is, in fact, an almost inevitable dualism
which makes it natural that a man should strive to aggrandize himself,
his family and his class even though he truly wishes for greater
equality of privilege. He floats on two currents, and as a man and a
brother may be glad of restraints upon his own class which are in the
interest of justice.
The ideal of freedom prevalent in the managing class is, however,
somewhat narrow and hardly hospitable to the group self-assertion of
the less privileged classes. The labor movement has made its way by its
energy and reasonableness in the face of a rather general mistrust and
opposition—sometimes justified by its aberrations—on the part of the
masters of industry. Yet even in this regard, as it comes to be seen
that organization is an element of fair play, and as experience shows
that union may become an instrument of stability, a broader sentiment
makes headway.
Like everything else that has power in human life, the money-strong
represent, in some sense, the survival of the fittest—not necessarily
of the best. That is, their success, certainly no guaranty of
righteousness, does prove a certain adaptation to conditions, those who
get rich being in general the ablest, for this purpose, of the many who
devote their energies to it with about the same opportunities. They are
not necessarily the ablest in other regards, since only certain kinds
of ability count in making money; other kinds, and those often the
highest, such as devotion to intellectual or moral ideals, being even a
hindrance. Men of genius will seldom shine in this way, because, as a
rule, only a somewhat commonplace mind will give itself whole-heartedly
to the commercial ideal.
There is much likeness in the persons and methods by which, in all
ages, the cruder sort of power is acquired. When the military system is
ascendent over the industrial it is acquired in one way, when property
is secure from force in another, but this makes less difference than
might be supposed. In either case it is not mere personal prowess, with
the sword or with the tool, that gains large success, but power in
organization. Aggressiveness, single-minded devotion to the end and,
above all, organizing faculty—these were the methods of Clovis and
Pepin and William of Normandy, as they are of our rulers of finance.
And now, as formerly, much of the power that is alive in such men falls
by inheritance into weaker hands.
As to righteousness, in the sense of good intention, they probably
do not, on the whole, differ much from the average. Some may be
found of the highest character, some of gross unscrupulousness. The
majority are doubtless without moral distinction and take the color
of their associates. The view sometimes set forth on behalf of men of
wealth that riches go with virtue, and the view, more popular among
non-possessors, that it comes by wickedness, are equally untrustworthy.
The great mass of wealth is accumulated by solid qualities—energy,
tenacity, shrewdness and the like—which may coexist with great moral
refinement or with the opposite.
As a group, however, they are liable to moral deficiencies analogous
to those of the conquerors and organizers of states just referred
to. There is, especially, a certain moral irresponsibility which is
natural to those who have broken away from customary limitations and
restraints and are coursing almost at will over an unfenced territory.
I mean that business enterprise, like military enterprise, deals
largely with relations as to which there are no settled rules of
morality, no constraining law or public opinion. Such conditions breed
in the ordinary actor a Macchiavellian opportunism. Since it is hard
to say what _is_ just and honest in the vast and abstract operations
of finance, human nature is apt to cease looking for a standard and
to seize booty wherever and however it safely can. Hence the truly
piratical character of many of our great transactions. And in smaller
matters also, as in escaping taxation, it is often fatally easy for the
rich to steal.
It must be allowed that such ascendency as the capitalist class has
rests, in part at least, upon service. That is to say, its members
have had an important function to perform, and in performing that
function have found themselves in a position to grasp wealth. The great
work of the time has been, or has seemed to be, the extension and
reconstruction of industry. In this work leadership and organization
have been needed on a great scale, and our captains of industry have
nobly met this demand. That their somewhat autocratic control of
production was called for by the situation seems to be shown by the
rather general failure of coöperative enterprises intended to dispense
with it. Why is it that America abounds in opportunity, and that every
sort of industrial capacity is eagerly sought out and rewarded? Of
course natural advantages play a great part, but much must also be
ascribed to the energy and imaginative daring of our entrepreneurs,
many of whom have spent great faculty and tireless zeal upon business,
in a spirit of adventure and achievement rather than of gain. Where the
general is aggressive the soldier will be kept busy.
I have no sympathy with the general abuse of commercialism, but hold
with Montesquieu that “The spirit of commerce is naturally attended
with that of frugality, economy, moderation, labor, prudence,
tranquillity, order and rule. So long as this spirit subsists
the riches it produces have no ill effect. The mischief is when
excessive wealth destroys the spirit of commerce; then it is that the
inconveniences of inequality begin to be felt.”[119]
The conception of keen adaptation of means to ends, of exact social
workmanship, inculcated by “business” is of untold value to our
civilization and capable of very general application. It is a very
proper demand that government, education and philanthropy should, in
this sense, be conducted on business principles.
At the same time it is plain that a large part of the accumulation
of wealth—hard unfortunately to distinguish from other parts—is
accomplished not by social service but, as just intimated, by something
akin to piracy. This is not so much the peculiar wickedness of a
predatory class as a tendency in all of us to abuse power when not
under definite legal or moral control. The vast transactions associated
with modern industry have come very little under such control, and
offer a field for freebooting such as the world has never seen.
Nor need we affirm that even the gains of the great organizers are
in the highest sense right, only that they are natural and do not
necessarily involve conscious wrong-doing.
The question of the rather arbitrary control of industry by the
capitalist-manager, which now prevails, and of the possibility of
this control being diminished or modified in the future, calls for
some analysis of underlying forces. Evidently there is a conflict of
principles here—the democratic or popular and the autocratic. The
latter, now ascendant, has the advantages of concentration, secrecy
and promptness—the same which give it superiority in war. On the other
hand, the democratic principle should have the same merit in industry
and commerce that it has in politics; namely that of enlisting the
pride and ambition of the individual and so getting him to put himself
into his work. Other things being equal, a free system is a more vital
and energetic organism than one in which the initiative and choice come
from a central authority.
And it is apparent that the working of the autocratic system in our
economic life shows just the strength and weakness that would naturally
be expected. The prompt undertaking and execution of vast schemes at
a favorable moment, and the equally prompt recession when conditions
alter; the investment of great resources in enterprises which yield
no immediate return; the decision and secrecy important in overcoming
competitors; the unhesitating sacrifice of workmen and their families
when the market calls for a shut-down of production—such traits as
these are of the utmost importance to commercial success, and belong
to arbitrary control rather than to anything of a more popular sort.
On the other hand, it would be easy to show at any length desired that
such control is accompanied by a widespread disaffection of spirit on
the part of the working classes, which, expressed in unwilling labor,
strikes and agitation, is a commercial disadvantage, and a social
problem so urgent as to unsettle the whole economic system.
The autocratic system has evidently a special advantage in a time of
rapid and confused development, when conditions are little understood
or regulated, and the state of things is one of somewhat blind and
ruthless warfare; but it is quite possible that as the new industries
become established and comparatively stable, there will be a commercial
as well as a social demand for a system that shall invite and utilize
more of the good-will and self-activity of the workman. “The system
which comes nearest to calling out all the self-interests and using all
the faculties and sharing all the benefits will outcompete any system
that strikes a lower level of motive faculty and profit.”[120] And the
penetrating thinker who wrote this sentence believed that the function
of the autocratic “captain of industry” was essentially that of an
explorer and conqueror of new domains destined to come later under the
rule of a commonwealth. Indeed the rise, on purely commercial grounds,
of a more humane and individualizing tendency, aiming in one way or
another to propitiate the self-feeling of the workman and get him to
identify himself with his work, is well ascertained. Among the familiar
phases of this are the notable growth of coöperative production
and exchange in Belgium, Russia and other European countries, the
increasing respect for labor unions and the development by large
concerns of devices for insurance, for pensions, for profit-sharing and
for the material and social comfort of their employees. “As a better
government has come up from the people than came down from the kings,
so a better industry appears to be coming up from the people than came
down from the capitalists.”[121]
In some form or other the democratic principle is sure to make its way
into the economic system. Coöperation, labor unions, public regulation,
public ownership and the informal control of opinion will no doubt all
have a part; the general outcome being that the citizen becomes a more
vital agent in the life of the whole.
Before discussing further the power of the capitalist-manager class,
we ought to think out clearly just what we mean by social power, since
nowhere are we more likely to go astray than in vagueness regarding
such notions.
Evidently the essence of it is control over the human spirit, and the
most direct phases of power are immediately spiritual, such as one
mind exercises over another by virtue of what it is, without any means
but the ordinary symbols of communication. This is live, human power,
and those who have it in great degree are the prime movers of society,
whether they gain any more formal or conventional sort or not. Such,
for instance, are the poets, prophets, philosophers, inventors and men
of science of all ages, the great political, military and religious
organizers, and even the real captains of industry and commerce. All
power involves in its origin mental or spiritual force of some sort;
and so far as it attaches to passive attributes, like hereditary social
position, offices, bank-accounts, and the like, it does so through the
aid of conventions and habits which regard these things as repositories
of spiritual force and allow them to exercise its function.
In its immediate spiritual phase power is at a maximum of vitality
and a minimum of establishment. Only a few can recognize it. Its
possessors, then, strive to establish and organize it, to give it
social expression and efficacy, to gain position, reputation or
wealth. Since power is not apparent to the common mind until it takes
on these forms, they are, to superficial observation and in all the
conventional business of life, the only valid evidence of it. And yet
by the time these symbols appear, the spiritual basis has often passed
away. Primary power goes for the most part unseen, much of it taking
on no palpable form until late in life, much yielding only posthumous
reputation, and much, and that perhaps the finest sort, having never
any vulgar recognition whatever.
Regarding money-value we may say, in general, that it is one expression
of the conventional or institutional phase of society, and exhibits
all that mixture of grandeur and confusion with which nature usually
presents herself to our understanding. I mean that its appraisal of
men and things is partly expressive of great principles, and partly,
so far as we can see, unjust, trivial or accidental. Some gains are
vital or organic, springing from the very nature of life and justified
as we come to understand that life; some are fanciful, springing from
the tastes or whims of the rich, like the value of diamonds or first
editions, and some parasitical, like those of the legally-protected
swindler. In general the values of the market are those of the habitual
world in all its grossness; spiritual values, except those that have
become conventional, being little felt in it. These appeal to the
future. The detailed working of market value has no ascertainable
connection with moral worth, and we must not expect it to have. If a
man’s work is moral, in the higher sense, it is in its nature an attack
upon the habitual world which the latter is more likely to resent than
reward. One can only take up that useful work that seems best suited to
him, trying to be content if its value is small, and, if large, to feel
that the power over money it gives him is rightly his only in so far as
he uses it for the general good.
The more tangible kind of social power—so far as it is intrinsic to the
man and not adventitious like inherited wealth—depends chiefly upon
organizing capacity, which may be described as the ability to build and
operate human machinery. It has its roots in tact and skill in dealing
with men, in tenacity, and in a certain instinct for construction. One
who possesses it sees a new person as social material, and is likely to
know what can be made of him better than he knows himself.[122]
Of all kinds of leadership this has the readiest recognition and the
highest market value; and naturally so, since it is essential to
every sort of coöperative achievement. Its possessors understand the
immediate control of the world, which they will exercise no matter what
the apparent forms of organization may be. In all ages they have gained
and held the grosser forms of power, whenever these were at all open
to competition. Thus, during the early Middle Age, men of energy and
management, more or less favored by situation, built up for themselves
local authority and estate, or perhaps exploited the opportunities for
still wider organization, like the founders of Burgundy and Brittany
and the early kings of France; very much in the same manner as men
of our own day build up commercial and industrial systems and become
senators and railway presidents.
Indeed, this type of ability was never in such demand as it now is,
for the conduct of the vast and diverse social structures rising about
us—industrial enterprises, political parties, labor unions, newspapers,
universities and philanthropies.
It has its high money value partly because of its rarity and partly
because there is a regular market for it; the need being so urgent and
obvious as to create a steady and intelligent demand. In this latter
respect it contrasts with services, like moral leadership, which people
need but will seldom pay for. A third reason is that its possessors
are almost always clever enough to know their own value and secure its
recognition.
In discussing the power of the capitalist class there is no question of
the finer and higher forms of power. We shall rarely find among the
rich any pregnant spiritual leadership, theirs being a pedestrian kind
of authority which has a great deal to do with the every-day comfort
of their contemporaries but does not attempt to sway the profounder
destinies of the race. Nor does the world often accord them enduring
fame: lacking spiritual significance their names are writ in water.
Even in industry the creative thought, the inventions which are the
germs of a new era, seldom come from money-winners, since they require
a different kind of insight.
The capitalist represents power over those social values that are
tangible and obvious enough to have a definite standing in the market.
His money and prestige will command food, houses, clothes, tools
and all conventional and standard sorts of personal service, from
lawn-mowing to the administration of a railroad, not genius or love or
anything of that nature. That wealth means social power of this coarser
sort is apparent in a general way, and yet merits a somewhat closer
examination.
We have, first, its immediate power over goods and services: the master
of riches goes attended by an invisible army of potential servitors,
ready to do for him anything that the law allows, and often more. He
is in this way, as in so many others, the successor of the nobleman
of mediæval and early modern history, who went about with a band of
visible retainers eager to work his will upon all opposers. He is the
ruler of a social system wherever he may be.
The political power of wealth is due only in part to direct corruption,
vast as that is, but is even more an indirect and perfectly legal
pressure in the shape of inducements which its adroit use can always
bring to bear—trade to the business man, practice to the lawyer and
employment to the hand-worker: every one when he thinks of his income
wishes to conciliate the rich. Influence of this sort makes almost
every rich man a political power, even without his especially wishing
to be. But when wealth is united to a shrewd and unscrupulous political
ambition, when it sets out to control legislation or the administration
of the laws, it becomes truly perilous. We cannot fail to see that
a large part of our high offices are held by men who have no marked
qualification but wealth, and would be insignificant without it; also
that our legislation—municipal, state and national—and most of our
administrative machinery, feel constantly the grasp of pecuniary power.
Probably it is not too much to say that except when public opinion is
unusually aroused wealth can generally have its way in our politics if
it makes an effort to do so.
As to the influence of the rich over the professional classes—lawyers,
doctors, clergymen, teachers, civil and mechanical engineers and the
like—we may say in general that it is potent but somewhat indirect,
implying not conscious subservience but a moral ascendency through
habit and suggestion. The abler men of this sort are generally educated
and self-respecting, have a good deal of professional spirit and are
not wholly dependent upon any one employer. At the same time, they get
their living largely through the rich, from whom the most lucrative
employment comes, and who have many indirect ways of making and marring
careers. The ablest men in the legal profession are in close relations
with the rich and commonly become capitalists themselves; physicians
are more independent, because their art is not directly concerned
with property, yet look to wealthy patients for their most profitable
practice; clergymen are under pressure to satisfy wealthy parishioners,
and teachers must win the good will of the opulent citizens who control
educational boards.
Now there is nothing in social psychology surer than that if there is
a man by whose good will we desire to profit, we are likely to adapt
our way of thinking to his. Impelled to imagine frequently his state
of mind, and to desire that it should be favorable to our aims, we are
unconsciously swayed by his thought, the more so if he treats us with a
courtesy which does not alarm our self-respect. It is in this way that
wealth imposes upon intellect. Who can deny it?
Newspapers are generally owned by men of wealth, which has no doubt
an important influence upon the sentiments expressed in them; but
a weightier consideration is the fact that they depend for profit
chiefly upon advertisements, the most lucrative of which come from rich
merchants who naturally resent doctrines that threaten their interest.
Of course the papers must reach the people, in order to have a value
for advertising or any other purpose, and this requires adaptation to
public opinion; but the public of what are known as the better class of
papers are chiefly the comparatively well-to-do. And even that portion
of the press which aims to please the hand-working class is usually
more willing to carry on a loud but vague agitation, not intended to
accomplish anything but increase circulation, than to push real and
definite reform.
All phases of opinion, including the most earnest and honest inquiry
into social questions, finds some voice in print, but—leaving aside
times when public opinion is greatly aroused—those phases that are
backed by wealthy interests have a great advantage in the urgency,
persistence and cleverness with which they are presented. At least,
this has been the case in the past. It is a general feeling of
thoughtful men among the hand-working class that it is hard to get
a really fair statement of their view of industrial questions from
that portion of the newspaper and magazine press that is read by
well-to-do people. The reason seems to be mainly that the writers live
unconsciously in an atmosphere of upper-class ideas from which they do
not free themselves by thorough inquiry. Besides this, there is a sense
of what their readers expect, and also, perhaps, a vague feeling that
the sentiments of the hand-working class may threaten public order.
Since the public has supplanted the patron, a man of letters has least
of all to hope or fear from the rich—if he accepts the opinion of Mr.
Howells that the latter can do nothing toward making or marring a new
book.
The power of wealth over public sentiment is exercised partly through
sway over the educated classes and the press, but also by the more
direct channel of prestige. Minds of no great insight, that is to say
the majority, mould their ideals from the spectacle of visible and
tangible success. In a commercial epoch this pertains to the rich; who
consequently add to the other sources of their influence power over the
imagination. Millions accept the money-making ideal who are unsuited to
attain it, and run themselves out of breath and courage in a race they
should never have entered; it is as if the thin-legged and flat-chested
people of the land should seek glory in foot-ball. The money-game is
mere foolishness and mortification for most of us, and there is a
madness of the crowd in the way we enter into it. Even those who most
abuse the rich commonly show mental subservience in that they assume
that the rich have, in fact, gotten what is best worth having.
As hinted above, there is such a thing as an upper-class atmosphere,
in the sense of a state of mind regarding social questions, initiated
by the more successful money-winners and consciously or unconsciously
imposed upon business and professional people at large. Most of us
exist in this atmosphere and are so pervaded by it that it is not easy
for us to understand or fairly judge the sentiment of the hand-working
classes. The spokesmen of radical doctrines are, in this regard, doing
good service to the public mind by setting in motion counterbalancing,
if not more trustworthy, currents of opinion.
If any one of business or professional antecedents doubts that he
breathes a class atmosphere, let him live for a time at a social
settlement in the industrial part of one of our cities—not a
real escape but as near it as most of us have the resolution to
achieve—reading working-class literature (he will be surprised to
find how well worth reading it is), talking with hand-working people,
attending meetings, and in general opening his mind as wide as possible
to the influences about him. He will presently become aware of being in
a new medium of thought and feeling; which may or may not be congenial
but cannot fail to be instructive.
FOOTNOTES:
[119] The Spirit of Laws, book v, chap. 6.
[120] Henry D. Lloyd, Man the Social Creator, 255.
[121] _Idem_, 246. Lloyd was rather a prophet than a man of science,
but there is a shrewd sense of fact back of his visions.
[122] Such a one
“Lässt jeden ganz das bleiben was er ist;
Er wacht nur drüber das er’s immer sei
Am rechten Ort; so weiss er aller Menschen
Vermögen zu dem seinigen zu machen.”
“He lets every one remain just what he is, but takes care that he shall
always be it in the right place: thus he knows how to make all men’s
power his own.” Schiller, Wallenstein’s Lager, I, 4.
CHAPTER XXIV
ON THE ASCENDENCY OF A CAPITALIST CLASS—CONTINUED
THE INFLUENCE OF AMBITIOUS YOUNG MEN—SECURITY OF THE DOMINANT CLASS IN
AN OPEN SYSTEM—IS THERE DANGER OF ANARCHY AND SPOLIATION?—WHETHER THE
SWAY OF RICHES IS GREATER NOW THAN FORMERLY—WHETHER GREATER IN AMERICA
THAN IN ENGLAND.
In any society where there is some freedom of opportunity ambitious
young men are an element of extreme importance. Their numbers are
formidable and their intelligence and aggressiveness much more so: in
short, they want an opening and are bound to get it.
As the members of this class are mainly impecunious, it might be
supposed that they would be a notable offset to the power of wealth;
and in a sense they are. It is their interest to keep open the
opportunity to rise, and they are accordingly inimical to caste and
everything which tends toward it. But it by no means follows that they
are opposed to the ascendency of an upper class based on wealth and
position. This becomes evident when one remembers that their aim is
_not to raise the lower class, but to get out of it_. The rising young
man does not identify himself with the lowly stratum of society in
which he is born, but, dissatisfied with his antecedents, he strikes
out for wealth, power or fame. In doing so he fixes his eyes on those
who have these things, and from whose example he may learn how to gain
them; thus tending to accept the ideals and standards of the actual
upper class. He gives a great deal of attention to the points of view
of A, a railroad president, B, a senator, and even of C, head of a
labor organization, but to a mere farmer or laborer, whose hand is on
no levers, he is indifferent.
The students of our universities are subject to a conflict between
the healthy idealism of youth, which prevails with the more generous,
and the influences just indicated, which become stronger as education
draws closer to practical affairs. On the whole, possessed of one great
privilege and eager to gain others, they are not so close in spirit to
the unprivileged classes as might be imagined.
Thus the force of ambitious youth goes largely to support the
ascendency of the money-getting class; directly, in that it accepts
the ideals of this class and looks forward to sharing its power;
indirectly, in that it is withdrawn from the resources of the humbler
class. How long will the rising lawyer retain his college enthusiasm
for social reform if the powers that be welcome him and pay him
salaries?
We have then the fact, rather paradoxical at first sight, that the
dominant class in a competitive society, although unstable as to
its individual membership, may well be more secure as a whole than
the corresponding class under any other system—precisely because it
continually draws into itself most of the natural ability from the
other classes. Throughout English history, we are told, the salvation
of the aristocracy has been its comparative openness, the fact that
ability could percolate into it, instead of rising up behind it like
water behind a dam, as was the case in pre-revolutionary France.
And the same principle is working even more effectually in our own
economic order. A great weakness of the trades-union movement, as of
all attempts at self-assertion on the part of the less privileged
classes, is that it is constantly losing able leaders. As soon as a man
shows that marked capacity which would fit him to do something for his
fellows, it is ten to one that he accepts a remunerative position, and
so passes into the upper class. It is increasingly the practice—perhaps
in some degree the deliberate policy—of organized wealth to win over in
this way the more promising leaders from the side of labor; and this is
one respect in which a greater class-consciousness and loyalty on the
part of the latter would add to its strength.
Thus it is possible to have freedom to rise and yet have at the same
time a miserable and perhaps degraded lower class—degraded because the
social system is administered with little regard to its just needs.
This is more the case with our own industrial system, and with modern
society in general, than our self-satisfaction commonly perceives.
Our one-sided ideal of freedom, excellent so far as it goes, has
somewhat blinded us to the encroachments of slavery on an unguarded
flank. I mean such things as bad housing, insecurity, excessive and
deadening work, child labor and the lack of any education suited to the
industrial masses—the last likely to be remedied now that it is seen to
threaten industrial prosperity.
It is hard to say how much of the timidity noticeable in the discussion
of questions of this sort by the comfortable classes is due to a vague
dread of anarchy and spoliation by an organized and self-conscious
lower class; but probably a good deal. If power, under democracy, goes
with numbers, and the many are poor, it would seem at first glance that
they would despoil the few.
To conservative thinkers a hundred, or even fifty, years ago this
seemed almost an axiom, but a less superficial philosophy has combined
with experience to show that anarchy, in Mr. Bryce’s words, “is of all
dangers or bugbears the one which the modern world has least cause to
fear.”[123]
The most apparent reason for this is the one already discussed, namely,
that power does not go with mere numbers, under a democracy more than
under any other form of government; a democratic aristocracy, that is,
one whose members maintain their position in an open struggle, being
without doubt the strongest that can exist. We shall never have a
revolution until we have caste; which, as I have tried to show, is but
a remote possibility. And as an ally of established power we have to
reckon with the inertia of social structure, something so massive and
profound that the loudest agitation is no more than a breeze ruffling
the surface of deep waters. Dominated by the habits which it has
generated, we all of us, even the agitators, uphold the existing order
without knowing it. There may, of course, be sudden changes due to the
fall of what has long been rotten, but I see little cause to suppose
that the timbers of our system are in this condition: they are rough
and unlovely, but far from weak.
Another conservative condition is that economic solidarity which
makes the welfare of all classes hang together, so that any general
disturbance causes suffering to all, and more to the weak than to the
strong. A sudden change, however reasonable its direction, must in this
way discredit its authors and bring about reaction. The hand-working
classes may get much less of the economic product than they ought to;
but they are not so badly off that they cannot be worse, and, unless
they lose their heads, will always unite with other classes to preserve
that state of order which is the guaranty of what they have. Anarchy
would benefit no one, unless criminals, and anything resembling a
general strike I take to be a childish expedient not likely to be
countenanced by the more sober and hard-headed leaders of the labor
movement. All solid betterment of the workers must be based on and get
its nourishment from the existing system of production, which must
only gradually be changed, however defective it may be. The success of
strikes, and of all similar tactics, depends, in the nature of things,
on their being partial, and drawing support from the undisturbed
remainder of the process. It is the same principle of mingling
stability with improvement which governs progress everywhere.
And, finally, effective organization on the part of the less privileged
classes goes along with intelligence, with training in orderly methods
of self-assertion, and with education in the necessity of patience and
compromise. The more real power they get, the more conservatively, as
a rule, they use it. Where free speech exists there will always be a
noisy party advocating precipitate change (and a timid party who are
afraid of them), but the more the people are trained in real democracy
the less will be the influence of this element.
Whatever divisions there may be in our society, it is quite enough
an organic whole to unite in casting out tendencies that are clearly
anarchic. And it is also evident that such tendencies are to be looked
for at least as much among the rich as among the poor. If we have at
one extreme anarchists who would like to despoil other people, we have,
at the other, monopolists and financiers who actually do so.
It is a common opinion that the sway of riches over the human mind
is greater in our time than previously, and greater in America than
elsewhere. How far is this really the case?
To understand this matter we must not forget that the ardor of the
chase—as in a fox hunt—may have little to do with the value of the
quarry. The former, certainly, was never so great in the pursuit of
wealth as here and now; chiefly because the commercial trend of the
times, due to a variety of causes, supplies unequalled opportunities
and incitements to engage in the money-game. In this, therefore, the
competitive zeal of an energetic people finds its main expression. But
to say that wealth stands for more in the inner thought of men, that
to have or not to have it makes a greater intrinsic difference, is
another and a questionable proposition, which I am inclined to think
opposite to the truth. Such spiritual value as personal wealth has
comes from its power over the means of spiritual development. It is,
therefore, diminished by everything which tends to make those means
common property: and the new order has this tendency. When money was
the only way to education, to choice of occupation, to books, leisure
and variety of intercourse, it was essential to the intellectual life;
there was no belonging to the cultured class without it. But with free
schools and libraries, the diffusion of magazines and newspapers, cheap
travel, less stupefying labor and shorter hours, culture opportunity
is more and more extended, and the best goods of life are opened, if
not to all, yet to an ever-growing proportion. Men of the humblest
occupations can and do become gentlemen and scholars. Indeed, people
are coming more and more to think that exclusive advantages are
uncongenial to real culture, since the deepest insight into humanity
can belong only to those who share and reflect upon the common life.
The effect is that wealth is shorn of much of that prestige of
knowledge, breeding and opportunity which always meant more than its
material power. The intellectual and spiritual centre of gravity,
like the political, sinks down into the masses of the people. Though
our rich are rich beyond the dreams of avarice, they mean less to the
inner life of the time, exercise less spiritual authority, perhaps,
than the corresponding class in any older society. They are the objects
of popular curiosity, resentment, admiration or envy, rather than the
moral deference given to a real aristocracy. They are not taken too
seriously. Indeed, there could be no better proof that the rich are no
overwhelming power with us than the amount of good-natured ridicule
expended upon them. Were they really a dominant order, the ridicule, if
ventured at all, would not be good-natured. Their ascendency is great
when compared with a theory of equality—and in this sense the remarks
in the last chapter should be understood—but small compared with that
of the ruling classes of the Old World.
Over a class of frenzied gold-seekers, rich or poor, chiefly in the
towns, the money-idea is no doubt ascendant; but if you approach the
ordinary farmer, mechanic or sober tradesman you are likely to find
that he sets no high rate on wealth beyond what is necessary for the
frugal support of a family, and that he neither admires nor envies
the rich, but looks at the millionaire and thinks: “After all, it
isn’t life. What does he get out of it more than the rest of us?” The
typical American is an idealist, and the people he looks up to are
those who stand in some way for the ideal life—or whom he supposes
to do so—most commonly statesmen, but often writers, scientists or
teachers. Education and culture, as Mr. Bryce and others have noticed,
is cherished by plain people all over the land, often to a degree that
puts to shame its professed representatives.
We find, then, that agitators who strive to incite the people against
the rich encounter with disgust an idealism which refuses to believe
that their advantages are extravagantly great; and one of the main
grievances of such men is what they look upon as the folly or lack of
spirit of the poor in this regard.
Never before, probably, was there so large a class of people who,
having riches, feel that they are a doubtful blessing, especially in
relation to the nurture of children. Many a successful man is at his
wits’ end to give his children those advantages of enforced industry,
frugality and self-control which he himself enjoyed. One of the
richest men of the day holds that accumulations are generally bad for
the children, as well as for society, and favors almost unlimited
graduated taxation of inheritances.[124] According to the philosophy
which he supports by practice as well as theory, the man who finds
himself rich is to live modestly and use his surplus as a trust fund
for the benefit of the public.
What would a man wish for his own son, if he could choose? First, no
doubt, some high and engrossing purpose, which should fill his life
with the sense of worthy striving and aspiration. After this he would
wish for health, friends, peace of mind, the enjoyment of books, a
happy family life and material comfort. But the last, beyond that
degree which even unskilled labor should bring, he would regard as of
secondary importance. Not a straitened house and table but a straitened
soul is the real evil, and the two are more separable now than
formerly. The more a real democracy prevails, the less is the spiritual
ascendency of riches.
There is, for instance, no such settled and institutional deference
to wealth in the United States as there seems to be in England; the
reason being, in part, that where there are inherited classes there are
also class standards of living, costly in the upper class, to which
those who would live in good company are under pressure to conform. In
England there is actually a ruling order, however ill defined, which
is generally looked up to and membership in which is apparently the
ambition of a large majority of all aspiring men who do not belong
to it by birth. Its habits and standards are such that only the
comparatively rich can be at home in it. There is nothing corresponding
to this with us. We have richer men and the pursuit of riches is an
even livelier game, but there is no such ascendency in wealth, no such
feeling that one must be rich to be respectable. With us, if people
have money they enjoy it; if not, they manage with what they have,
neither regarding themselves nor regarded by others as essentially
inferior.
It is also a general feeling here that wealth should not be a
controlling factor in marriage, and it is not common for American
parents to object seriously to a proposed son-in-law (much less a
daughter-in-law) on the mere ground of lack of means, apart from his
capacity to earn a living. The matter-of-fact mercenariness in this
regard which, as we are led to believe by the novelists, prevails
in the upper circles of England, is as yet somewhat shocking to the
American mind.
Hereditary titles, sometimes imagined to be a counterpoise to the
ascendency of wealth, are really, in our time at least, a support and
sanction to it, giving it an official standing and permanence it cannot
have in democracy. We understand that in England wealth—with tact,
patience and maybe political services—will procure a title, which,
unlike anything one can get for money in America, is indestructible
by vice and folly, and can be used over and over to buy wealth in
marriage. “Nothing works better in America than the promptness with
which the degenerate scions of honored parents drop out of sight.”[125]
Rank is not an offset but a reward and bribe to wealth; perhaps the
only merit that can be claimed for it in this connection being that
the desire and deference for it imposes a certain discipline on the
arrogance of newly acquired riches.
The English idea that those in high offices should have a magnificent
style of living, “becoming to their station,” is also one that goes
with caste feeling. It makes it hardly decent for the poor to hold such
offices, and is almost absent here, where, if riches are important to
political success, the condition is one of which the people do not
approve and would gladly dispense with.
I doubt whether the whole conception which imputes merit to wealth
and seeks at least the appearance of the latter in modes of dress,
attendance and the like, is not stronger everywhere in Europe than in
the United States.
FOOTNOTES:
[123] The American Commonwealth, Chapter 94.
[124] Andrew Carnegie.
[125] T. W. Higginson, Book and Heart, 145.
CHAPTER XXV
THE ORGANIZATION OF THE ILL-PAID CLASSES
THE NEED OF CLASS ORGANIZATION—USES AND DANGERS OF UNIONS—GENERAL
DISPOSITION OF THE HAND-WORKING CLASSES.
It is not the purpose of this book to add anything to the merely
controversial literature of the time; and in treating the present
topic I intend no more than to state a few simple and perhaps obvious
principles designed to connect it with our general line of thought.
It is quite apparent that an organized and intelligent
class-consciousness in the hand-working people is one of the primary
needs of a democratic society. In so far as this part of the people is
lacking in a knowledge of its situation and in the practice of orderly
self-assertion, a real freedom will also be lacking, and we shall have
some kind of subjection in its place; freedom being impossible without
group organization. That industrial classes exist—in the sense already
explained[126]—cannot well be denied, and existing they ought to be
conscious and self-directing.
The most obvious need of class-consciousness is for self-assertion
against the pressure of other classes, and this is both most necessary
and most difficult with those who lack wealth and the command over
organized forces which it implies. In a free society, especially, the
Lord helps those who help themselves; and those who are weak in money
must be strong in union, and must also exert themselves to make good
any deficiency in leadership that comes from ability deserting to more
favored classes.
That the dominant power of wealth has an oppressive action, for the
most part involuntary, upon the people below, will hardly be denied
by any competent student. The industrial progress of our time is
accompanied by sufferings that are involved with the progress. These
sufferings—at least in their more tangible forms—fall almost wholly
upon the poorer classes, while the richer get a larger share of the
increased product which the progress brings. By sufferings I mean not
only the physical hardship and liability to disease, early decay, and
mutilation or death by accident, which fall to the hand-worker; but
also the debasement of children by premature and stunting labor, the
comparative lack of intellectual and social opportunities, the ugly and
discouraging surroundings, and the insecurity of employment, to which
he and his are subject. There is no purpose to inflict these things;
but they are inflicted, and the only remedy is a public consciousness,
especially in the classes who suffer from them, of their causes and the
means by which they can be done away with.
The principal expressions of class-consciousness in the hand-working
classes in our day are labor unions and that wider, vaguer, more
philosophical or religious movement, too various for definition, which
is known as socialism. Regarding the latter I will only say at present
that it includes much of what is most vital in the contemporary working
of the democratic spirit; the large problems with which its doctrines
deal I prefer to discuss in my own way.
Labor unions are a simpler matter. They have arisen out of the urgent
need of self-defence, not so much against deliberate aggression as
against brutal confusion and neglect. The industrial population has
been tossed about on the swirl of economic change like so much sawdust
on a river, sometimes prosperous, sometimes miserable, never secure,
and living largely under degrading, inhuman conditions. Against this
state of things the higher class of artisans—as measured by skill,
wages and general intelligence—have made a partly successful struggle
through coöperation in associations, which, however, include much
less than half of those who might be expected to take advantage of
them.[127] That they are an effective means of class self-assertion is
evident from the antagonism they have aroused.
Besides their primary function of group-bargaining, which has come to
be generally recognized as essential, unions are performing a variety
of services hardly less important to their members, and serviceable
to society at large. In the way of influencing legislation they
have probably done more than all other agencies together to combat
child-labor, excessive hours, and other inhuman and degrading kinds
of work; also to provide for safeguards against accident, for proper
sanitation of factories, and the like. In this field their work is as
much defensive as aggressive, since employing interests, on the other
side, are constantly influencing legislation and administration to
their own advantage.
Their function as spheres of fellowship and self-development is equally
vital and less understood. To have a we-feeling, to live shoulder to
shoulder with one’s fellows, is the only human life; we all need it to
keep us from selfishness, sensuality and despair, and the hand-worker
needs it even more than the rest of us. Usually without pecuniary
resource and insecure of his job and his home, he is, in isolation,
miserably weak and in a way to be cowed and unmanned by misfortune or
mere apprehension. Drifting about in a confused society, unimportant,
apparently, to the rest of the world, it is no wonder if he feels
“I am no link of Thy great chain,”[128]
and loses faith in himself, in life and in God. The union makes him
feel that he is part of a whole, one of a fellowship, that there are
those who will stand by him in trouble, that he counts for something
in the great life. He gets from it that thrill of broader sentiment,
the same in kind that men get in fighting for their country; his
self is enlarged and enriched and his imagination fed with objects,
comparatively, “immense and eternal.”
Moreover, the life of labor unions and other class associations,
through the training which it gives in democratic organization and
discipline, is perhaps the chief guaranty of the healthy political
development of the hand-working class—especially those imported
from non-democratic civilizations—and the surest barrier against
recklessness and disorder. That their members get this training will
be evident to anyone who studies their working, and it is not apparent
that they would get it in any other way. Men learn most in acting for
purposes which they understand and are interested in, and this is more
certain to be the case with economic aims than with any other.
Thus, if unions should never raise wages or shorten hours, they
would yet be invaluable to the manhood of their members. At worst,
they ensure the joy of an open fight and of companionship in defeat.
Self-assertion through voluntary organization is of the essence of
democracy, and if any part of the people proves incapable of it it
is a bad sign for the country. On this ground alone it would seem
that patriots should desire to see organization of this sort extend
throughout the industrial population.
The danger of these associations is that which besets human nature
everywhere—the selfish use of power. It is feared with reason that if
they have too much their own way they will monopolize opportunity by
restricting apprenticeship and limiting the number of their members;
that they will seek their ends through intimidation and violence;
that they will be made the instruments of corrupt leaders. These and
similar wrongs have from time to time been brought home to them, and,
unless their members are superior to the common run of men, they are
such as must be expected. But it would be a mistake to regard these
or any other kinds of injustice as a part of the essential policy of
unions. They are feeling their way in a human, fallible manner, and
their eventual policy will be determined by what, in the way of class
advancement, they find by experience to be practicable. In so far
as they attempt things that are unjust we may expect them, in the
long run, to fail, through the resistance of others and through the
awakening of their own consciences. It is the part of other people to
check their excesses and cherish their benefits.
In general no sort of persons mean better than hand-laboring men. They
are simple, honest people, as a rule, with that bent toward integrity
which is fostered by working in wood and iron and often lost in the
subtleties of business. Moreover, their experience is such as to
develop a sense of the brotherhood of man and a desire to realize it in
institutions. Not having enjoyed the artificial support of accumulated
property, they have the more reason to know the dependence of each on
his fellows. Nor have they any great hopes of personal aggrandizement
to isolate them and pamper their self-consciousness.
To these we may add that offences from this quarter are likely to be
more shocking and less dangerous than those of a more sophisticated
sort of people. Occasional outbreaks of violence alarm us and call for
prompt enforcement of law, but are not a serious menace to society,
because general sentiment and all established interests are against
them; while the subtle, respectable, systematic corruption by the rich
and powerful threatens the very being of democracy.
The most deplorable fact about labor unions is that they embrace so
small a proportion of those that need their benefits. How far into the
shifting masses of unskilled labor effective organization can extend
only time will show.
FOOTNOTES:
[126] See chapter 21.
[127] Professor John R. Commons (Publications of the American
Sociological Society, vol. ii, p. 141) estimates 2,000,000 members of
unions out of 6,000,000 wage-earners “available for class conflict.”
[128] George Herbert.
CHAPTER XXVI
POVERTY
THE MEANING OF POVERTY—PERSONAL AND GENERAL CAUSES—POVERTY IN A
PROSPEROUS SOCIETY DUE CHIEFLY TO MALADJUSTMENT—ARE THE POOR THE
“UNFIT”?—WHO IS TO BLAME FOR POVERTY?—ATTITUDE OF SOCIETY TOWARD THE
POOR—FUNDAMENTAL REMEDIES.
The most practical definition of poverty is that now widely adopted
which relates it to function, and calls those the poor whose income is
not sufficient to keep up their health and working efficiency. This
may be vague but is not too much so to be useful, and is capable of
becoming quite definite through exact inquiry. At least it indicates
roughly a considerable portion of the people who are poor in an obvious
and momentous sense of the word.
Being undernourished, the poor lack energy, physical, intellectual and
moral. Whatever the original cause of their poverty, they cannot, being
poor, work so hard, think so clearly, plan so hopefully, or resist
temptation with so much steadfastness as those who have the primary
means of keeping themselves in sound condition.
Moreover, the lack of adequate food, clothing and housing commonly
implies other lacks, among which are poor early training and education,
the absence of contact with elevating and inspiring personalities, a
narrow outlook upon the world, and, in short, a general lack of social
opportunity.
The poor are not a class in the sense of having a distinct psychical
organization. Absorbed in a discouraging material struggle, or perhaps
in the sensuality and apathy to which a discouraging outlook is apt
to lead, they have no spirit or surplus energy adequate to effectual
coöperative endeavor on their own initiative, or even to grasping
the benefits of existing organization. As a rule they get far less
from the law and its administration, from the church, the schools,
the public libraries and the like, than the classes more capable of
self-assertion, and this is particularly true in a _laissez-faire_
democracy, such as ours, which gives rights pretty much in proportion
to the vigor with which they are demanded. It is this lack of common
consciousness and purpose that explains the ease with which, in all
ages, the poor have been governed, not to say exploited, from above.
And if they are getting some consciousness and purpose at the present
time, it is largely for the very reason that they are less inveterately
and hopelessly poor now than in the past.
The familiar question whether poverty is due to personal or social
causes is in itself somewhat fallacious, as smacking of a philosophy
that does not see that the personal and social are inseparable.
Everything in personality has roots in social conditions, past or
present. So personal poverty is part of an organic whole, the effect
in one way or another, by heredity or influence, of the general life.
The question has significance, however, when we understand it as asking
whether or not the cause is so fixed in personality that it cannot
be counteracted by social influences. We find that in a community
generally prosperous a part of the people—say ten per cent.—are
poor in the urgent sense indicated above. The practical question is,
Are these people poor from causes so established in their characters
(however originating) that the rest of the community can do nothing
effectual for them, or are they plastic to forces which might raise
them to a normal standard of living?
As to this—leaving out the various extreme opinions which attend all
such questions—there is a fair measure of agreement among competent
observers somewhat to the following effect: There is a considerable
number of individuals and families having intrinsic defects of
character which must always keep them poor so long as they are left
in the ordinary degree of self-dependence. The great majority of the
poor, however, have no ineradicable personal weakness but are capable
of responding to influences which might raise them to a normal standard
of living. In other words, the nine-tenths of the community which is
not poor might conceivably bring influences to bear which would—in a
healthy manner and without demoralizing alms-giving—remove all but a
small part of the poverty of the other tenth. It is only a question
of putting into the matter sufficient knowledge and good will. As to
the view, still not uncommon, that the laziness, shiftlessness and
vice of the poor are the source of their difficulties, it may be said
that these traits, so far as they exist, are now generally regarded
by competent students as quite as much the effect as the cause of
poverty. If a man is undervitalized he will either appear lazy or will
exhaust himself in efforts which are beyond his strength—the latter
being common with those of a nervous temperament. Shiftlessness, also,
is the natural outcome of a confused and discouraging experience,
especially if added to poor nutrition. And as to drink and other
sensual vices, it is well understood that they are the logical resource
of those whose life does not meet the needs of human nature in the
way of variety, pleasantness and hope. There are other causes of vice
besides poverty, as appears from its prevalence among the unresourceful
rich, but there can be no doubt that good nurture, moderate work,
wholesome amusement and a hopeful outlook would do away with a great,
probably the greater, part of it. There are, no doubt, among the poor,
as among the well-to-do, many cases of incurable viciousness and
incompetence, but it would be no less unjust and foolish to assume that
any individual is of this sort than to give up a scarlet fever patient
because some will die of that disease in spite of the best treatment.
I find that the ablest and most experienced workers have generally the
most confidence as to what may be done even with the apparently lazy,
shiftless or vicious by bringing fresh suggestions, encouragements and
opportunities to bear upon them. And it is only a small portion of the
poor that are even apparently lazy, shiftless or vicious; the majority
comparing not unfavorably with the well-to-do classes in these respects.
Leaving aside general conditions which may depress whole nations or
races, the main cause of poverty in a prosperous country like the
United States is without doubt some sort of maladjustment between
the individual, or the family or neighborhood group, and the wider
community, by reason of which potential capacity does not yield its
proper fruit in efficiency and comfort. This is evidently the case,
for example, with the sort of poverty most familiar in our American
cities; that due to the transplanting of vast numbers of Europeans to
a society, not too good for them as we carelessly assume, but out of
connection with their habits and traditions. The Italians, Slavs and
Russian Jews who just now throng our cities are by no means deficient,
on the whole, either in intelligence, industry or thrift; and those who
know them best find them prolific in some qualities, such as artistic
sensibility of various kinds, in which America is otherwise rather
deficient. But the process of adaptation to our industrial conditions
is trying and leaves many in poverty and demoralization.
Among the native population also, poverty and the moral degradation
which is often found with it is due largely, perhaps chiefly, to
various kinds of maladjustment between the working classes and the
industrial system—to loss of employment from periodical depressions
or from the introduction of new methods, to the lack of provision for
industrial education, to the perils attending migration from country to
city, and so on.
What shall we say of the doctrine very widely, though perhaps not very
clearly, held that the poor are the “unfit” in course of elimination,
and are suffering the painful but necessary consequences of an
inferiority that society must get rid of at any cost? A notion of this
kind may be discovered in the minds of many men of fair intelligence,
and is due to remote, obscure and for the most part mistaken
impressions of the teaching of Malthus and Darwin.
The unfit, in the sense of Darwin and of biology in general, are those
whose hereditary type is so unsuited to the conditions of life that it
tends to die out, or at least suffer relative diminution in numbers,
under the action of these conditions—as white families tend to die
out in the tropics. In other words, they have an inferiority due to
heredity, and this inferiority is of such a character that they do not
leave as many children to continue their race as do those of a superior
or fitter type.
It is very questionable whether any great part of the poor answer the
description in either of these respects. As to the first, it is the
prevailing opinion with those most familiar with the matter that their
inferiority, except possibly where a distinct race is in question, as
with the Negroes, is due chiefly to deficient nurture, training and
opportunity, and not to heredity. This view is supported by the fact
that under the conditions which a country of opportunity, like the
United States, affords, great masses of people rise from poverty to
comfort, and many of them to opulence, showing that the stock was as
capable as any. Something of this sort has taken place with German and
Irish immigrants, and is likely to take place with Jews, Slavs and
Italians.
As to elimination, it is well known that only poverty of the most
extreme and destructive kinds avails to restrict propagation, and that
the moderately poor have a higher rate of increase than the educated
and well-to-do classes. It is, in fact, far more the latter that are
the “unfit” in a biological sense than the former.
The truth is that poverty is unfitness, but in a social and not a
biological sense. That is to say, it means that feeding, housing,
family life, education and opportunity are below the standards that
the social type calls for, and that their existence endangers the
latter in a manner analogous to that in which the presence of inferior
cattle in a herd endangers the biological type. They threaten, and to
a greater or less degree actually bring about, a general degradation
of the community, through ignorance, inefficiency, disease, vice,
bad government, class hatred (or, still worse, class servility and
arrogance) and so on.
But since the unfitness is social rather than biological, the method
of elimination must also be social, namely, the reform of housing and
neighborhood conditions, improvement of the schools, public teaching of
trades, abolition of child-labor and the humanizing of industry.
That there are strains of biological unfitness among the
poor—hereditary idiocy, or nervous instability tending toward vice and
crime, for example—is not to be denied, and certainly these should be
eliminated, but poverty, far from effecting elimination, is perhaps
their main cause. This will, no doubt, be duly considered by students
of the new science of eugenics, for which those of us who approach
social problems from another point of view may yet have the highest
regard and expectation. Only a shallow sort of mind will suppose
there is any necessary conflict between biological and psychological
sociology.
As to the question, who is to blame for poverty, let us remember that
the whole question of praise or blame is one of point of view and
expediency. Blame the poor if it will do them any good, and sometimes,
perhaps, it will, but not so often probably as the well-to-do are apt
to imagine. It used to be thought that people must always be held
responsible for their condition, and that the main if not the only
source of improvement was to prod their sense of this responsibility;
but more thoughtful observation shows that it is not always a good
thing to urge the will. “Worry,” says an experienced worker,[129] “is
one of the direct and all-pervading causes of economic dependence,”
and he asserts that “Take no thought for the morrow” is often the
most practical advice. Many indications, among them the spread of
“mind-cure” doctrines and practices, point to a widely felt need
to escape from the waste and unrest of an over-stimulated sense of
responsibility.
The main blame for poverty must rest upon the prosperous, because they
have, on the whole, far more power in the premises. However, poverty
being due chiefly to conditions of which society is only just beginning
to become conscious, we may say that in the past nobody has been to
blame. It is an unintended result of the economic struggle, and is
“done with the elbows rather than the fists.” But consciousness is
arising, and with it comes responsibility. We are becoming aware of
what makes poverty and how it can in great part be done away with, and
if accomplishment does not keep pace with knowledge we shall be to
blame indeed.
All parts of society being interdependent, the evils of poverty are
not confined to one class, but spread throughout the whole; and the
influence of a low standard of living is felt in the corruption of
politics, the prevalence of vice and the inefficiency of labor. The
cause of the poor is therefore the cause of all, and from this point
of view those of them who in spite of weakness, discouragement and
neglect keep up the fight for a decent life and shun dependence and
degradation, should be regarded as heroic defenders of the general
welfare, deserving praise as much as the soldier at the front. If we
do not so regard them, it is because of our lack of intelligence and
social consciousness.
In a truly organic society the struggles and suffering of a poor
class would arouse the same affectionate and helping solicitude as is
felt when one member of a family falls ill. In contrast to this, the
indifference or somewhat contemptuous pity usually felt toward poverty
indicates a low state of community sentiment, a deficient we-feeling.
Respect and appreciation would seem to be due to those who sustain the
struggle successfully, and sympathetic help to those who are broken
down by it. Especially brutal, stupid and inexpedient—when we think of
it—is the old way of lumping the poor with the degenerate as “the lower
class,” and either leaving them to bear their discredited existence as
best they may, or dealing out to them a contemptuous and unbrotherly
alms. The confusion with the degraded of those who are keeping up the
social standard in the face of exceptional difficulties is as mean and
deadly a wrong as could well be.
In so far as there is an effective, self-conscious Christian spirit
in the world, thought, feeling and effort must concentrate wherever
there is injustice or avoidable suffering. That this takes place so
slowly and imperfectly in the matter of poverty is largely owing to a
lack of clear perception of what ought to be done. I suppose there is
no doubt that if mere gifts could wipe out poverty it would be wiped
out at once. But people are now, for the most part, just sufficiently
informed to see the futility of ordinary alms, without being instructed
in the possibilities of rational philanthropy. Rational philanthropy
is coming, however, along with an excellent literature and a body
of expert persons who unite humane enthusiasm with a scientific
spirit.[130]
The fundamental remedy for poverty is, of course, rational organization
having for its aim the control of those conditions, near and remote,
which lead people into it and prevent their getting out. The most
radical measures are those which are educational and protective in a
very broad and searching sense of the words—the humanization of the
primary school system, industrial education, facilities for play,
physical training and healthy amusement, good housing, the restriction
by law of child labor and of all vicious and unwholesome conditions,
and, finally, the biological precaution of stopping the propagation of
really degenerate types of men.
If we can give the children of the poor the right start in life, they
will themselves, in most cases, develop the intelligence, initiative,
self-control and power of organization which will enable them to
look out for their own interests when they are mature. The more one
thinks of these questions the more he will feel that they can only be
solved by helping the weaker classes to a position where they can help
themselves.
FOOTNOTES:
[129] An editorial writer in Charities and the Commons, presumably
Professor Devine, the author of Principles of Relief, and other works
on rational charity.
[130] “Our children’s children may learn with amazement how we thought
it a natural social phenomenon that men should die in their prime,
leaving wives and children in terror of want; that accidents should
make an army of maimed dependents; that there should not be enough
houses for workers; and that epidemics should sweep away multitudes
as autumn frost sweeps away summer insects.” Simon N. Patten, The New
Basis of Civilization, 197.
CHAPTER XXVII
HOSTILE FEELING BETWEEN CLASSES
CONDITIONS PRODUCING CLASS ANIMOSITY—THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE ALLAYS
BITTERNESS—POSSIBLE DECREASE OF THE PRESTIGE OF WEALTH—PROBABILITY OF
A MORE COMMUNAL SPIRIT IN THE USE OF WEALTH—INFLUENCE OF SETTLED RULES
FOR SOCIAL OPPOSITION—IMPORTANCE OF FACE-TO-FACE DISCUSSION.
Class animosity by no means increases in proportion to the separation
of classes. On the contrary, where there is a definite and recognized
class system which no one thinks of breaking down, a main cause of
arrogance and jealousy is absent. Every one takes his position for
granted and is not concerned to assert or improve it. In Spain, it
is said, “you may give the inch to any peasant; he is sure to be a
gentleman, and he never thinks of taking the ell.” So in an English
tale, written about 1875, I find the following: “The peasantry and
little people in country places like to feel the gentry far above
them. They do not care to be caught up into the empyrean of an equal
humanity, but enjoy the poetry of their self-abasement in the belief
that their superiors are indeed their betters.” So at the South there
was a kind of fellowship between the races under slavery which present
conditions make more difficult. A settled inequality is the next best
thing, for intercourse, to equality.
But where the ideal of equality has entered, even slight differences
may be resented, and class feeling is most bitter, probably, where this
ideal is strong but has no regular and hopeful methods of asserting
itself. In that case aspiration turns sour and generates hateful
passions. Caste countries are safe from this by lacking the ideal of
equality, democracies by partly realizing it. But in Germany, for
instance, where there is a fierce democratic propaganda on the one
hand, and a stone wall of military and aristocratic institutions on the
other, one may feel a class bitterness that we hardly know in America.
And in England also, at the present time, when classes are still
recognized but very ill-defined, there seems to be much of an uneasy
preoccupation about rank, and of the elbowing, snubbing and suspicion
that go with it. People appear to be more concerned with trying to
get into a set above them, or repressing others who are pushing up
from below, than with us. In America social position exists, but,
having no such definite symbols as in England, is for the most part
too intangible to give rise to snobbery, which is based on titles and
other externalities which men may covet or gloat over in a way hardly
possible when the line is merely one of opinion, congeniality and
character.
The feeling between classes will not be very bitter so long as the
ideal of service is present in all and mutually recognized. And it is
the tendency of the democratic spirit—very imperfectly worked out as
yet—to raise this ideal above all others and make it a common standard
of conduct. Thus Montesquieu, describing an ideal democracy, says
that ambition is limited “to the sole desire, to the sole happiness,
of doing greater services to our country than the rest of our fellow
citizens. They cannot all render her equal services, but they all ought
to serve her with equal alacrity.” He thinks also that the love of
frugality, by which he means compunction in material self-indulgence,
“limits the desire of having to the study of procuring necessities to
our family and superfluities to our country.”[131] If it were indeed so
in our own world, there would be no danger of a class conflict.
Possibly all states of opinion by which any service is despised are
survivals from a caste society, and reminiscent of the domination of
one order over another—just as slavery has left a feeling in the South
that hand labor is degrading. So soon as all kinds of workers share
freely in the social and political order, all work must be respected.
The social prestige of idleness, of “conspicuous leisure,” that still
exists in the Old World, is evidently a survival of this sort, and
it can hardly happen in the democratic future that “people will let
their nails grow that all may see they do not work.” “I do not call
one greater and one smaller,” says Whitman, “that which fills its
period and place is equal to any.”[132] I think, however, that there
will always be especial esteem for some sorts of achievement, but the
grounds for this will, more and more, be distinction in the common
service.
The excessive prestige of wealth, along with much of the ill feeling
which it involves, is also, in my opinion, rather a legacy from
caste society than a trait congenial to democracy. I have tried to
show that the ascendency of riches is really greater in the older
and less democratic societies; and it survives in democracy as much
as it does partly because of the tradition that associates wealth
with an upper caste, and partly because other ideals are as yet crude
and unorganized. A real democracy of sentiment and action, a renewed
Christianity and a renewed art might make life beautiful and hopeful
for those who have little money without diminishing the wholesome
operation of the desire for gain. At present the common man is
impoverished not merely by an absolute want of money but by a current
way of thinking which makes pecuniary success the standard of merit,
and so makes him feel that failure to get money is failure of life.
As we no longer feel much admiration for mere physical prowess, apart
from the use that is made of it, so it seems natural that the same
should come true of mere pecuniary strength. The mind of a child, or
of any naive person, bases consideration chiefly on function, on what
a man can do in the common life, and it is in the line of democratic
development that we should return toward this simple and human view.
It is in accord with this movement that children of all classes are
more and more taught the use of tools, cooking and other primary arts
of life. This not only makes for economy and independence, but educates
the “instinct of workmanship,” leading us to feel an interest in all
good work and a respect for those who do it.
The main need of men is life, self-expression, not luxury, and if
self-expression can be made general material inequalities alone will
excite but little resentment.
As to the use of wealth we may expect a growing sense of social
responsibility, of which there are already cheerful indications. Since
it is no longer respectable to be idle, why may we not hope that it
will presently cease to be respectable to indulge one’s lower self in
other ways—in pecuniary greed, in luxurious eating, in display, rich
clothes and other costly and exclusive pleasures?
We must not, however, be so optimistic as to overlook the ease with
which narrow or selfish interests may form special groups of their own,
encouraging one another in greed or luxury to the neglect of the common
life. Such associations cannot altogether shut out general sentiment,
but they can and do so far deaden its influence that the more hardened
or frivolous are practically unconscious of it. While there are some
cheerful givers on a large scale among us, and many on a small one, I
am not sure that there was ever, on the whole, a commercial society
that contributed a smaller part of its gains to general causes. We
have done much in this way; but then we are enormously rich; and the
most that has been done has been by taxation, which falls most heavily
upon small property-owners. The more communal use of wealth is rather
a matter of general probability, and of faith in democratic sentiment,
than of demonstrable fact.
Much might be said of the various ways in which more community
sentiment might be shown and class resentment alleviated. In the matter
of dress, for example; shall one express his community consciousness
in it or his class consciousness, assuming that each is natural and
creditable? It would seem that when he goes abroad among men the good
democrat should prefer to appear a plain citizen, with nothing about
him to interrupt intercourse with any class. And in fact, it is a
wholesome feature of American life, in notable contrast with, say,
Germany, that high as well as low are averse to wearing military or
other distinctive costume in public—except at times of festival or
display, when class consciousness is in special function. We feel that
if a man wants to distinguish himself in general intercourse he should
do so in courtesy or wisdom, not in medals or clothes.
And why should not the same principle, of deference to the community
in non-essentials, apply to one’s house and to one’s way of living in
general? If he has anything worthy to express in these things, let him
express it, but not pride or luxury.
Let us not, however, formulize upon the question what one may rightly
spend money for, or imagine that formulism is practicable. The
principle that wealth is a trust held for the general good is not to be
disputed; but latitude must be left to individual conceptions of what
the general good is. These are matters not for formulas or sumptuary
laws, but for conscience. To set up any other standard would be to
suppress individuality and do more harm than good.
Some of us would be glad to see almost any amount of wealth spent upon
beautiful architecture, though we might prefer that the buildings be
devoted to some public use. Let us have beauty, even luxury, but let
it be public and communicable. It certainly seems at first sight that
vast expenditure upon private yachts, private cars, costly balls,
display of jewelry, sumptuous eating and the like, indicates a low
state of culture; but perhaps this is a mistake; no doubt there is some
beneficence in these things not generally understood.
We do not want uniformity in earning and spending, more than elsewhere,
only unity of spirit. Some writers praise the emulation that is
determined to have as fine things as others have, but while this has
its uses it is a social impulse of no high kind and keeps the mass of
men feeling poor and inferior. Our dignity and happiness would profit
more if each of us were to work out life in a way of his own without
invidious comparisons. We shall never be content except as we develop
and enjoy our individuality and are willing to forego what does not
belong to it. I know that I was not born to get or to use riches, but I
am willing to believe that others are.
An essential condition of better feeling in the inevitable struggles
of life is that there should be just and accepted “rules of the game”
to give moral unity to the whole. Much must be suffered, but men will
suffer without bitterness if they believe that they do so under just
and necessary principles.
A solid foundation has been laid for this, in free countries, by the
establishment of institutions under which all class conflicts are
referred, in the last resort, to human nature itself. Through free
speech a general will may be organized on any matter urgent enough to
attract general attention, and through democratic government this may
be tested, recorded and carried out. Thus is provided a tribunal free
from class bias before which controversies may be tried and settled in
an orderly manner.
It would be hard to exaggerate the importance to social peace of
this recognition of the ultimate authority of public opinion, acting
slowly but surely through constitutional methods. It means a moral
whole which prescribes rules, directs sane agitation into healthy and
moderate channels, and takes away all rational ground for violence or
revolution. If men, for instance, believe that a particular kind of
socialistic state is the cure for the evils of society, let them speak,
print and form their party. Perhaps they are right; at least, they get
much wholesome self-expression and a kind of happiness out of their
aspiration and labors. And if they are partly wrong, yet they may both
learn and impart much to the general advantage.
But we have made only a beginning in this. Our ethics is only a vague
outline, not a matured system, and in the details of social contact—as
between employer and workman, rich and poor, Negro and white, and so
on—there is such a lack of accepted standards that men have little to
go by but their crude impulses. All this must be worked out, in as much
patience and good will as possible, before we can expect to have peace.
Where there is no very radical conflict of essential principles, ill
feeling may commonly be alleviated by face-to-face discussion, since
the more we come to understand one another the more we get below
superficial unlikeness and find essential community. Between fairly
reasonable and honest men it is always wholesome to “have it out,” and
many careful studies of labor troubles agree regarding the large part
played by misunderstandings and suspicion that have no cause except
lack of opportunity for explanation. “The rioting would not have taken
place,” says a student of certain mining disorders, “had not the
ignorance and suspicion of the Hungarians been supplemented by the
ignorance and suspicion of the employers; and the perseverance of this
mutual attitude may yet create another riot.”[133] There is a strong
temptation for those in authority, especially if they are overworked,
or conscious of being a little weak or unready in conference, to fence
themselves with formality and the type-written letter. But a man of
real fitness in any administrative capacity must have stomach for open
and face-to-face dealing with men.
And a democratic system sooner or later brings to pass face-to-face
discussion of all vital questions, because the people will be satisfied
with no other. An appearance of shirking it will arouse even more
distrust and hostility than the open avowal of selfish motives; and
accordingly it is more and more the practice of aggressive interests to
seek to justify themselves by at least the appearance of frank appeal
to popular judgment.
FOOTNOTES:
[131] The Spirit of Laws, book v, chap. 3.
[132] Leaves of Grass, 71.
[133] Spahr, America’s Working People, 128.
_PART V_
INSTITUTIONS
CHAPTER XXVIII
INSTITUTIONS AND THE INDIVIDUAL
THE NATURE OF INSTITUTIONS—HEREDITARY AND SOCIAL FACTORS—THE
CHILD AND THE WORLD—SOCIETY AND PERSONALITY—PERSONALITY VERSUS
THE INSTITUTION—THE INSTITUTION AS A BASIS OF PERSONALITY—THE
MORAL ASPECT—CHOICE VERSUS MECHANISM—PERSONALITY THE LIFE OF
INSTITUTIONS—INSTITUTIONS BECOMING FREER IN STRUCTURE.
An institution is simply a definite and established phase of the public
mind, not different in its ultimate nature from public opinion, though
often seeming, on account of its permanence and the visible customs
and symbols in which it is clothed, to have a somewhat distinct and
independent existence. Thus the political state and the church, with
their venerable associations, their vast and ancient power, their
literature, buildings and offices, hardly appear even to a democratic
people as the mere products of human invention which, of course, they
are.
The great institutions are the outcome of that organization which
human thought naturally takes on when it is directed for age after age
upon a particular subject, and so gradually crystallizes in definite
forms—enduring sentiments, beliefs, customs and symbols. And this is
the case when there is some deep and abiding interest to hold the
attention of men. Language, government, the church, laws and customs
of property and of the family, systems of industry and education, are
institutions because they are the working out of permanent needs of
human nature.
These various institutions are not separable entities, but rather
phases of a common and at least partly homogeneous body of thought,
just as are the various tendencies and convictions of an individual:
they are the “apperceptive systems” or organized attitudes of the
public mind, and it is only by abstraction that we can regard them as
things by themselves. We are to remember that the social system is
above all a whole, no matter how the convenience of study may lead us
to divide it.
In the individual the institution exists as a habit of mind and of
action, largely unconscious because largely common to all the group: it
is only the differential aspect of ourselves of which we are commonly
aware. But it is in men and nowhere else that the institution is to be
found. The real existence of the Constitution of the United States, for
example, is in the traditional ideas of the people and the activities
of judges, legislators and administrators; the written instrument being
only a means of communication, an Ark of the Covenant, ensuring the
integrity of the tradition.
The individual is always cause as well as effect of the institution:
he receives the impress of the state whose traditions have enveloped
him from childhood, but at the same time impresses his own character,
formed by other forces as well as this, upon the state, which thus in
him and others like him undergoes change.
If we think carefully about this matter, however, we shall see that
there are several somewhat different questions which might be included
in a study of the relation between the individual and institutions;
and these we ought to distinguish.
One of them is that of the babe to the world, or of the hereditary
factor of life, existing in us at birth, to the factor of communication
and influence.
Another and quite different one is that of society and personality, or
of the relation between the mature individual and the whole of which he
is a member.
A third is the question—again a distinct one—of the relation, not
between the person and society at large, but between him and particular
institutions. This last is the one with which we are more properly
concerned, but it may not be amiss to offer some observations on the
others.
The child at birth, when, we may suppose for convenience, society
has had no direct influence upon him, represents the race stock or
hereditary factor in life in antithesis to the factor of tradition,
communication and social organization. He also represents an
undeveloped or merely biological individuality in contrast to the
developed social whole into which he comes.
We think of the social world as the mature, organized, institutional
factor in the problem; and yet we may well say that the child also
embodies an institution (using the word largely) and one more ancient
and stable than church or state, namely the biological type, little
changed, probably, since the dawn of history. It cannot be shown in
any way that I know of that the children born to-day of English or
American parents—leaving aside any question of race mixture—are greatly
different in natural outfit from the Saxon boys and girls, their
ancestors, who played upon the banks of the Elbe fifteen hundred years
ago. The rooted instincts and temperament of races appear to be very
much what they were, and the changes of history—the development of
political institutions, the economic revolutions, the settlement of
new countries, the Reformation, the rise of science and the like—are
changes mainly in the social factor of life, which thus appears
comparatively a shifting thing.
In the development of the child, then, we have to do with the
interaction of two types, both of which are ancient and stable, though
one more so than the other. And the stir and generation of human
life is precisely in the mingling of these types and in the many
variations of each one. The hereditary outfit of a child consists of
vague tendencies or aptitudes which get definiteness and meaning only
through the communicative influences which enable them to develop. Thus
babbling is instinctive, while speech comes by this instinct being
defined and instructed in society; curiosity comes by nature, knowledge
by life; fear, in a vague, instinctive form, is supposed to be felt
even by the fœtus, but the fears of later life are chiefly social
fears; there is an instinctive sensibility which develops into sympathy
and love; and so on.
Nothing is more futile than general discussions of the relative
importance of heredity and environment. It is much like the case of
matter _versus_ mind; both are indispensable to every phase of life,
and neither can exist apart from the other: they are coördinate in
importance and incommensurable in nature. One might as well ask
whether the soil or the seed predominates in the formation of a tree,
as whether nature does more for us than nurture. The fact that most
writers have a predilection for one of these factors at the expense
of the other (Mr. Galton and the biological school, for example,
seeing heredity everywhere, and not much else, while psychologists and
sociologists put the stress on influence) means only that some are
trained to attend to one class of facts and some to another. One may be
more relevant for a given practical purpose than the other, but to make
a general opposition is unintelligent.
To the eye of sentiment a new-born child offers a moving contrast
to the ancient and grimy world into which it so innocently enters;
the one formed, apparently, for all that is pure and good, “trailing
clouds of glory” as some think, from a more spiritual world than ours,
pathetically unconscious of anything but joy; the other gray and
saturnine, sure to prove in many ways a prison-house, perhaps a foul
one.
“Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight.”[134]
No doubt, however, the pathos of this contrast arises in part from
somewhat fallacious preconceptions. The imagination idealizes the
child, reading its own visions into his innocence as it does into the
innocence of the sea and the mountains, and contrasting his future
career not with what he is, but with an ideal of what he might become.
In truth the child already feels, in his own way, the painful side of
life; he has the seeds of darkness in him as well as those of light,
and cannot in strictness be said to be any better than the world. The
good of life transcends his imagination as much as does the evil, and
he could not become anything at all except in a social world. The pity
of the matter, which may well move every one who thinks of it to work
for better homes, schools and playgrounds, is simply that we are about
to make so poor a use of a plastic material, that he might be so much
better and happier if we would prepare a better place for him.
It is true, in a sense, as Bacon says, that youth has more of divinity,
but perhaps we might also say that it has more of deviltry; the younger
life is, the more unbound it is, not yet in harness, with more divine
insight and more reckless passion, and adolescence is the period of
criminality as well as of poetry.
There is a natural affinity between childhood and democracy; the latter
implying, indeed, that we are to become more as little children, more
simple, frank and human. And it is a very proper part of the democratic
movement that more and more prestige is attaching to childhood, that
it is more studied, cherished and respected. Probably nothing else
gives such cogency to the idea of reform as to think of what it means
to children. We wish to know that all the children of the land are
happily unfolding their minds and hearts at home, school and play; and
that there is a gradual induction into useful work, which also proceeds
regularly and happily. This calls for better homes and neighborhoods,
and the overcoming of conditions that degrade them; it implies
better schools, the suppression of child-labor, regular industrial
education, wholesome and fairly paid work and reasonable security of
position. While the child is not exactly better than the world, his
possibilities make us feel that the world ought to be better for his
sake.
As fast as a child becomes a person, he also becomes a member of the
existing social order. This is simply a case of a whole and one of its
differentiated parts; having so often insisted that society and the
individual are aspects of the same thing, I need not enlarge upon it
here. Even the degenerate, so far as they have faculty enough to be
human, live in the social order and are as much one with it as the rest
of mankind. We simply cannot separate the individual from society at
large; to get a contrast we must pass on to consider him in relation to
particular institutions, or to institutions in general as distinguished
from more plastic phases of life.
An institution is a mature, specialized and comparatively rigid part
of the social structure. It is made up of persons, but not of whole
persons; each one enters into it with a trained and specialized part
of himself. Consider, for instance, the legal part of a lawyer, the
ecclesiastical part of a church member or the business part of a
merchant. In antithesis to the institution, therefore, the person
represents the wholeness and humanness of life; he is, as Professor
Alfred Lloyd says,[135] “a corrector of partiality, and a translator
and distributor of special development.” A man is no man at all if
he is merely a piece of an institution; he must stand also for human
nature, for the instinctive, the plastic and the ideal.
The saying that corporations have no soul expresses well enough
this defect of all definite social structures, which gives rise to
an irrepressible conflict between them and the freer and larger
impulses of human nature. Just in proportion as they achieve an
effective special mechanism for a narrow purpose, they lose humanness,
breadth and adaptability. As we have to be specially on our guard
against commercial corporations, because of their union of power and
impersonality, so we should be against all institutions.
The institution represents might, and also, perhaps, right, but right
organized, mature, perhaps gone to seed, never fresh and unrecognized.
New right, or moral progress, always begins in a revolt against
institutions.
I have in mind a painting which may be said to set forth to the
eye this relation between the living soul and the institution. It
represents St. James before the Roman Emperor.[136] The former is
poorly clad, beautiful, with rapt, uplifted face; the latter majestic,
dominant, assured, seated high on his ivory chair and surrounded by
soldiers.
Of course the institutional element is equally essential with the
personal. The mechanical working of tradition and convention pours
into the mind the tried wisdom of the race, a system of thought
every part of which has survived because it was, in some sense, the
fittest, because it approved itself to the human spirit. In this way
the individual gets language, sentiments, moral standards and all
kinds of knowledge: gets them with an exertion of the will trifling
compared with what these things originally cost. They have become a
social atmosphere which pervades the mind mostly without its active
participation. Once the focus of attention and effort, they have now
receded into the dimness of the matter-of-course, leaving energy free
for new conquests. On this involuntary foundation we build, and it
needs no argument to show that we could accomplish nothing without it.
Thus all innovation is based on conformity, all heterodoxy on
orthodoxy, all individuality on solidarity. Without the orthodox
tradition in biology, for instance, under the guidance of which a
store of ordered knowledge had been collected, the heterodoxy of
Darwin, based on a reinterpretation of this knowledge, would have been
impossible. And so in art, the institution supplies a basis to the very
individual who rebels against it. Mr. Brownell, in his work on French
Art, points out, in discussing the relation of Rodin the innovating
sculptor to the French Institute, that he owes his development and
the interest his non-conformity excites largely to “the very system
that has been powerful enough to popularize indefinitely the subject
both of subscription and revolt.”[137] In America it is not hostile
criticism but no criticism at all—sheer ignorance and indifference—that
discourages the artist and man of letters and makes it difficult to
form a high ideal. Where there is an organized tradition there may be
intolerance but there will also be intelligence.
Thus choice, which represents the relatively free action of human
nature in building up life, is like the coral insect, always working
on a mountain made up of the crystallized remains of dead predecessors.
It is a mistake to suppose that the person is, in general, _better_
than the institution. Morally, as in other respects, there are
advantages on each side. The person has love and aspiration and all
sorts of warm, fresh, plastic impulses, to which the institution is
seldom hospitable, but the latter has a sober and tried goodness of the
ages, the deposit, little by little, of what has been found practicable
in the wayward and transient outreachings of human idealism. The law,
the state, the traditional code of right and wrong, these are related
to personality as a gray-haired father to a child. However world-worn
and hardened by conflict, they are yet strong and wise and kind, and we
do well in most matters to obey them.
A similar line of reasoning applies to the popular fallacy that a
nation is of necessity less moral in its dealings with other nations
than an individual with other individuals. International morality is
on a low plane because it is recent and undeveloped, not from any
inevitable defect in its nature. It is slow to grow, like anything else
of an institutional character, but there is no reason why it should
not eventually express the utmost justice and generosity of which we
are capable. All depends upon the energy and persistence with which
people try to effectuate their ideals in this sphere. The slowness of
an institution is compensated by its capacity for age-long cumulative
growth, and in this way it may outstrip, even morally, the ordinary
achievement of individuals—as the Christian Church, for example, stands
for ideals beyond the attainment of most of its members. If we set our
hearts on having a righteous state we can have one more righteous than
any individual.
The treatment of Cuba by the United States and the suppression of the
slave-trade by the British are examples of nations acting upon generous
principles which we may reasonably expect to extend as time goes on. As
the need of international justice and peace becomes keenly felt, its
growth becomes as natural as the analogous process in an individual.
Whenever the question is raised between choice and mechanism,[138] the
advocates of the latter may justly claim that it saves energy, and may
demand whether, in a given case, the results of choice justify its cost.
Thus choice, working on a large scale, is competition, and the only
alternative is some mechanical principle, either the inherited status
of history or some new rule of stability to be worked out, perhaps, by
socialism. Yet the present competitive order is not unjustly censured
as wasteful, harassing, unjust and hostile to the artistic spirit.
Choice is working somewhat riotously, without an adequate basis of
established principles and standards, and so far as socialism is
seeking these it is doing well.
Carlyle and others have urged with much reason that the mediæval
workman, hemmed in as he was by mechanical and to us unreasonable
restrictions, was in some respects better off than his modern
successor. There was less freedom of opportunity, but also less strain,
ugliness and despair; and the standards of the day were perhaps better
maintained than ours are now.
We need a better discipline, a more adequate organization; the
competent student can hardly fail to see this; but these things do not
exist ready-made, and our present task seems to be to work them out,
at the expense, doubtless, of other objects toward which, in quieter
times, choice might be directed.
Thus it is from the interaction of personality and institutions that
progress comes. The person represents more directly that human nature
which it is the end of all institutions to serve, but the institution
represents the net result of a development far transcending any single
personal consciousness. The person will criticise, and be mostly in the
wrong, but not altogether. He will attack, and mostly fail, but from
many attacks change will ensue.
It is also true that although institutions stand, in a general way,
for the more mechanical phase of life, they yet require, within
themselves, an element of personal freedom. Individuality, provided it
be in harness, is the life of institutions, all vigor and adaptability
depending upon it.
An army is the type of a mechanical institution; and yet, even
in an army, individual choice, confined of course within special
channels, is vital to the machine. In the German army, according to a
competent observer, there is a systematic culture of self-reliance,
a “development of the individual powers by according liberty to the
utmost extent possible with the maintenance of the necessary system
and discipline.” “To the commandant of the company is left the entire
responsibility for the instruction of his men, in what mode and at
what hour he may see fit,” and “a like freedom is accorded to every
officer charged with every branch whatsoever of instruction,” while
“the intelligence and self-reliance of the soldier is constantly
appealed to.”[139] In American armies the self-reliant spirit of
the soldier and the common-sense and adaptability developed by our
rough-and-ready civilization have always been of the utmost value.
Nor are they unfavorable to discipline, that “true discipline of the
soldiers of freedom, a discipline which must arise from individual
conviction of duty and is very different from the compulsory discipline
of the soldier of despotism.”[140] Thus, in the battle of Gettysburg,
when Pickett’s charge broke the Federal line, and when for the moment,
owing to the death of many officers, the succession of command was
lost, it is said that the men without orders took up a position which
enabled them to crush the invading column.
As the general character of organization becomes freer and more human,
both the mechanical and the choosing elements of the institution
rise to a higher plane. The former ceases to be an arbitrary and
intolerant law, upheld by fear, by supernatural sanctions and the
suppression of free speech; and tends to become simply a settled habit
of thought, settled not because discussion is stifled but because it is
superfluous, because the habit of thought has so proved its fitness to
existing conditions that there is no prospect of shaking it.
Thus in a free modern state, the political system, fundamental
property rights and the like are settled, so far as they are settled,
not because they are sacred or authoritative, but because the public
mind is convinced of their soundness. Though we may not reason about
them they are, so to speak, potentially rational, inasmuch as they are
believed to rest upon reason and may at any time be tested by it.
The advantages and disadvantages of this sort of institutions are well
understood. They do not afford quite the sharp and definite discipline
of a more arbitrary system, but they are more flexible, more closely
expressive of the public mind, and so, if they can be made to work at
all, more stable.
The free element in institutions also tends to become better informed,
better trained, better organized, more truly rational. We have so many
occasions to note this that it is unnecessary to dwell upon it here.
FOOTNOTES:
[134] Wordsworth, Ode on the Intimations of Immortality, etc.
[135] In a paper on The Personal and the Factional in the Life of
Society. The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods,
1905, p. 337.
[136] By Mantegna.
[137] Page 30. See also the last chapter.
[138] I mean by mechanism anything in the way of habit, authority or
formula that tends to dispense with choice.
[139] Baring-Gould, Germany, i, 350 _ff._
[140] Garibaldi’s Autobiography, i, 105.
CHAPTER XXIX
INSTITUTIONS AND THE INDIVIDUAL—CONTINUED.
INNOVATION AS A PERSONAL TENDENCY—INNOVATION AND CONSERVATISM AS
PUBLIC HABIT—SOLIDARITY—FRENCH AND ANGLO-SAXON SOLIDARITY—TRADITION
AND CONVENTION—NOT SO OPPOSITE AS THEY APPEAR—REAL DIFFERENCE, IN
THIS REGARD, BETWEEN MODERN AND MEDIÆVAL SOCIETY—TRADITIONALISM AND
CONVENTIONALISM IN MODERN LIFE.
The time-worn question of conservatism as against change has evidently
much in common with that of personality as against institutions.
Innovation, that is, is bound up with the assertion of fresh
personality against mechanism; and the arguments for and against it
are the same as I have already suggested. Wherever there is vigor and
constructive power in the individual there is likely to be discontent
with the establishment. The young notoriously tend to innovation, and
so do those of a bold and restless temperament at any age; the old, on
the contrary, the quiet, the timid, are conservative. And so with whole
peoples; in so far as they are enfeebled by climate or other causes
they become inert and incapable of constructive change.
What may not be quite so obvious, at least to those who have not read
M. Tarde’s work on the Laws of Imitation,[141] is that innovation
or the opposite may be a public habit, independently of differences
in age or vigor. The attitude toward change is subject to the same
sort of alteration as public opinion, or any other phase of the
public mind. That a nation has moved for centuries in the deepest
ruts of conservatism, like China or India, is no proof of a lack of
natural vigor, but may mean only that the social type has matured and
hardened in isolation, not encountering any influence pungent enough to
pierce its shell and start a cycle of change. Thus it is now apparent
that lack of incitement, not lack of capacity, was the cause of the
backwardness of Japan, and there is little doubt that the same is true
of China.
Energy and suggestion are equally indispensable to all human
achievement. In the absence of the latter the mind easily spends itself
in minor activities, and there is no reason why this should not be true
of a whole people and continue for centuries. Then, again, a spark
may set it on fire and produce in a few years pregnant changes in the
structure of society. The physical law of the persistence of energy in
uniform quantity is a most illusive one to apply to human life. There
is always a great deal more mental energy than is utilized, and the
amount that is really productive depends chiefly on the urgency of
suggestion. Indeed, the higher activities of the human mind are, in
general, more like a series of somewhat fortuitous explosions than like
the work of a uniform force.
There may also be a habit of change that is mere restlessness and
has no constructive significance. In the early history of America a
conspicuous character on the frontier was the man who had the habit
of moving on. He would settle for two or three years in one locality
and then, getting restless, sell out and go on to another. So at
present, those whom ambition and circumstance, in early manhood, have
driven rapidly from one thing to another, often continue into old
age the habit so acquired, making their families and friends most
uncomfortable. I have noticed that there are over-strenuous people who
have come to have an ideal of themselves as making an effort, and are
most uneasy when this is not the case. To “being latent feel themselves
no less” is quite impossible to them.
In our commercial and industrial life the somewhat feverish progress
has generated a habit, a whole system of habits, based on the
expectation of change. Enterprise and adaptability are cultivated at
the expense of whatever conflicts with them; each one, feeling that the
procession is moving on and that he must keep up with it, hurries along
at the expense, perhaps, of health, culture and sanity.
This unrest is due rather to transition than to democracy; the ancient
view that the latter is in its nature unstable being, as I have said,
quite discredited. Even De Tocqueville, about 1835, saw that the
political unrest of America was in minor affairs, and that a democratic
polity might conceivably “render society more stationary than it has
ever been in our western part of the world.”[142] Tarde has expounded
the matter at length and to much the same effect. A policy is stable
when it is suited to prevailing conditions; and every year makes it
more apparent that for peoples of European stock, at least, a polity
essentially democratic is the only one that can permanently meet this
test.
A social group in which there is a fundamental harmony of forces
resulting in effective coöperation may be said, I suppose, to be
_solidaire_, to adopt a French word much used in this connection. Thus
France with its comparatively homogeneous people has no doubt more
solidarity—notwithstanding its dissensions—than Austria; England more
than Russia, and Japan more than China.
But if one thinks closely about the question he will find it no easy
matter to say in just what solidarity consists. Not in mere likeness,
certainly, since the difference of individuals and parts is not only
consistent with but essential to a harmonious whole—as the harmony of
music is produced by differing but correlated sounds. We want what
Burke described as “that action and counteraction, which in the natural
and in the political world, from the reciprocal struggle of discordant
powers draws out the harmony of the universe.”[143]
So far as likeness is necessary it is apparently a likeness of
essential ideas and, still more, of sentiments, appropriate to the
activity in question. Thus a Japanese writer explains the patriotic
unity of his countrymen by their common devotion to the Mikado and the
imperial family.
“When a Japanese says ‘I love my country,’ a great or even the greater
part of his idea of his ‘country’ is taken up by the emperor and the
imperial family ... his forefathers and descendants are also taken
into account.” “In joy and in sorrow he believes that they (his own
ancestors) are with him. He serves them as if they were living. And
these ancestors whom he loves and reveres were all loyal to their
emperors in their days; so he feels _he_ must be loyal to _his_
emperor.
“Nothing is so real to him as what he feels; and he feels that with
him are united the past, the present and the future generations
of his countrymen.” “Thus fully conscious of the intense sympathy
of his compatriots, both dead and living, and swelled with lofty
anticipations of his glorious destiny, no danger can appall and no
toil can tire the real Japanese soldier.”[144]
In America unity of spirit is intense, and yet singularly headless and
formless. There is no capital city, no guiding upper class, no monarch,
no creed, scarcely even a dominating tradition. It seems to be a matter
of common allegiance to vague sentiments of freedom, kindliness and
hope. And this very circumstance, that the American spirit is so little
specialized and so much at one with the general spirit of human nature,
does more than anything else to make it influential, and potent in the
assimilation of strange elements.
The only adequate proof of a lack of solidarity is inefficiency in
total action. There may be intense strife of parties and classes which
has nothing really disintegrating in it; but when we see, as was
apparently the case in Russia not long ago, that the hour of conflict
with an external enemy does not unite internal forces but increases
their divergence, it is clear that something is wrong.
It is sometimes said that France has more solidarity than Great Britain
or the United States, the ground being that we have a less fluent unity
of the social mind, a more vigorous self-assertion of the individual.
But this is as dubious as to say that the contention of athletes
among themselves will prevent their uniting to form a strong team. Yet
there does seem to be an interesting difference in kind between the
sort of unity, of common discipline and sentiment, which exists among
the French and that of English or Americans—these latter, however
different, being far more like each other in this respect than either
to the French. The contrast seems to me so illuminating, as a study of
social types, that I will spend a few pages in attempting to expound it.
French thought—as to this I follow largely Mr. Brownell’s penetrating
study[145]—seems to be not only more centralized in place, that
is, more dominated by the capital, but also, leaving aside certain
notorious divisions, more uniform, more authoritative, more intolerant,
more obviously _solidaire_. There is less initiative, less aggressive
non-conformity. French sentiment emphasizes equality much more than
individual freedom and is somewhat intolerant of any marked departure
from the dominant types of thought. There is more jealousy of personal
power, especially in politics, and less of that eager yet self-poised
sympathy with triumphant personality which we find in England or
America. There is, in fact, more need to be jealous of a personal
ascendency, because, when it once gains sway, there is less to check
it. And with all this goes the French system of public education,
whose well-known uniformity, strictness of discipline and classical
conservatism is both cause and effect of the trend toward formal
solidarity.
There is also an intolerance of the un-French and an inability to
understand it even greater, perhaps, than the corresponding phenomenon
in other nations. The French are self-absorbed and care little for the
history of other peoples. Nor are they sympathetic with contemporaries.
“In Paris, certainly,” says Mr. Brownell, “the foreigner, hospitably as
he is invariably treated, is invariably treated as the foreigner that
he is.”[146]
The relative weakness of individuality in France is due, of course,
not to any lack of self-feeling, but to the fact that the Frenchman
identifies himself more with the social whole, and, merged in that,
does not take his more particular self so seriously. It is rather a
we-feeling than an I-feeling, and differentiates France more sharply
from other nations than it does the individual Frenchman from his
compatriots. “He does not admire France because she is his country.
His complacence with himself proceeds from the circumstance that he
is a Frenchman; which is distinctly what he is first, being a man
afterward.”[147] “One never hears the Frenchman boast of the character
and quality of his compatriots as Englishmen and ourselves do. He
is thinking about France, about her different _gloires_, about her
position at the head of civilization.”[148]
As there is less individuality in general, so there is a happy lack of
whimsical and offensive oddity, of sharp corners and bad taste. Mr.
Brownell finds nothing more significant than the absence in France of
prigs. “One infers at once in such a society a free and effortless
play of the faculties, a large, humorous and tolerant view of oneself
and others, leisure, calm, healthful and rational vivacity, a tranquil
confidence in one’s own perceptions and in the intelligence of one’s
neighbors.”[149]
With this partial irresponsibility, this tendency not to take one’s
private self too seriously, goes a lack of moral extremes of all kinds.
Their goodness is not so good, their vice not so vicious as ours. Both
are more derived from immediate intercourse. “What would be vice among
us remains in France social irregularity induced by sentiment.[150]”
These traits have an obvious connection with that more eager and facile
communicativeness that strikes us so in the French: they have as a rule
less introspection, live more immediately and congenially in a social
stream from which, accordingly, they are less disposed to differentiate
themselves.
France is, no doubt, as truly democratic in its way as the United
States; indeed, in no other country, perhaps, is the prevalent
sentiment of the people in a given group so _cratic_, so immediately
authoritative. Such formalism as prevails there is of a sort with
which the people themselves are in intelligent sympathy, not one
imposed from above like that of Russia, or even that of Germany. But
it is a democracy of a type quite other than ours, less differentiated
individually and more so, perhaps, by groups, more consolidated and
institutional. The source of this divergence lies partly in the
course of history and partly, no doubt, in race psychology. Rooted
dissensions, like that between the Republic and the Church, and the
need of keeping the people in readiness for sudden war, are among the
influences which make formal unity more necessary and tolerable in
France than in England.
The French kind of solidarity has both advantages and disadvantages as
compared with the Anglo-Saxon. It certainly facilitates the formation
of well-knit social groups; such, for instance, as the artistic
“schools” whose vigor has done so much toward giving France its lead
in æsthetic production. On the other hand, where the Anglo-Saxon type
of structure succeeds in combining greater vigor of individuality with
an equally effective unity of sentiment, it would seem to be, in so
far, superior to a type whose solidarity is secured at more expense
of variation. It is the self-dependence, the so-called individualism,
of the Teutonic peoples which has given them so decided a lead in the
industrial and political struggles of recent times.
Perhaps the most searching test of solidarity is that loyalty of the
individual to the whole which ensures that, however isolated, as a
soldier, a pioneer, a mechanic, a student, he will cherish that whole
in his heart and do his duty to it in contempt of terror or bribes.
And it is precisely in this that the Anglo-Saxon peoples are strong.
The Englishman, though alone in the wilds of Africa, is seldom other
than an Englishman, setting his conscience by English standards and
making them good in action. This moral whole, possessing the individual
and making every one a hero after his own private fashion, is the
solidarity we want.
Tradition comes down from the past, while convention arrives, sidewise
as it were, from our contemporaries; the fireside tales and maxims of
our grandparents illustrate the one, the fashions of the day the other.
Both indicate continuity of mind, but tradition has a long extension in
time and very little, perhaps, in place, while convention extends in
place but may endure only for a day.
This seems a clear distinction, and a great deal has been made of
it by some writers, who regard “custom imitation” and “fashion
imitation,”[151] to use the terms of Tarde, the brilliant French
sociologist, as among the primary traits that differentiate societies.
Thus mediæval society, it is said, was traditional: people lived
in somewhat isolated groups and were dominated by the ideas of
their ancestors, these being more accessible than those of their
contemporaries. On the other hand, modern society, with its telegraphs,
newspapers and migrations, is conventional. Thought is transmitted over
vast areas and countless multitudes; ancestral continuity is broken
up; people get the habit of looking sidewise rather than backward, and
there comes to be an instinctive preference of fashion over custom. In
the time of Dante, if you travelled over Europe you would find that
each town, each district, had its individual dress, dialect and local
custom, handed down from the fathers. There was much change with place,
little with time. If you did the same to-day, you would find the people
everywhere dressed very much alike, dialects passing out of use and men
eager to identify themselves with the common stir of contemporary life.
And you would also find that the dress, behavior and objects of current
interest, though much the same for whole nations and having a great
deal in common the world over, were somewhat transient in character,
changing much with time, little with place.
There is, truly, a momentous difference in this regard between modern
and mediæval life, but to call it a change from tradition to convention
does not, I think, indicate its real character. Indeed, tradition and
convention are by no means the separate and opposite things they may
appear to be when we look at them in their most contrasted phases.
It would be strange if there were any real separation between ideas
coming from the past and those coming from contemporaries, since they
exist in the same public mind. A traditional usage is also a convention
within the group where it prevails. One learns it from other people
and conforms to it by imitation and the desire not to be singular,
just as he does to any other convention. The quaint local costume that
still prevails in out-of-the-way corners of Europe is worn for the
same reasons, no doubt, that the equally peculiar dress-suit and silk
hat are worn by sophisticated people the world over; one convention is
simply more extended than the other. In old times the conforming group,
owing to the difficulty of intercourse, was small. People were eager to
be in the fashion, as they are now, but they knew nothing of fashions
beyond their own locality. Modern traditions are conventional on a
larger scale. The Monroe Doctrine, to take a dignified example, is a
tradition, regarded historically, but a convention as to the manner in
which it enters into contemporary opinion.
In a similar manner we may see that conventions must also be
traditions. The new fashions are adaptations of old ones, and there
are no really new ideas of any sort, only a gradual transformation of
those that have come down from the past.
In a large view, then, tradition and convention are merely aspects of
the transmission of thought and of the unity of social groups that
results from it. If our mind is fixed upon the historical phase of
the matter we see tradition, if upon the contemporary phase we see
convention. But the process is really one, and the opposition only
particular and apparent. All influences are contemporary in their
immediate origin, all are rooted in the past.
What is it, then, that makes the difference between an apparently
traditional society, such as that of mediæval Europe, and an apparently
conventional society, like that of our time? Simply that the conditions
are such as to make one of these phases more obvious than the other. In
a comparatively small and stable group, continuous in the same locality
and having little intercourse with the world outside, the fact that
ideas come from tradition is evident; they pass down from parents to
children as visibly as physical traits. Convention, however, or the
action of contemporary intercourse, is on so small a scale as to be
less apparent; the length and not the breadth of the movement attracts
the eye.
On the other hand, in the case of a wide-reaching group bound into
conscious unity by facile communication, people no longer look chiefly
to their fathers for ideas; the paternal influence has to compete with
many others, and is further weakened by the breaking up of family
associations which goes with ease of movement. Yet men are not less
dependent upon the past than before; it is only that tradition is so
intricate and so spread out over the face of things that its character
as tradition is hardly to be discovered. The obvious thing now is the
lateral movement; influences seem to come in sidewise and fashion rules
over custom. The difference is something like that between a multitude
of disconnected streamlets and a single wide river, in which the
general downward movement is obscured by numerous cross-currents and
eddies.
In truth, facile communication extends the scope of tradition as much
as it does that of fashion. All the known past becomes accessible
anywhere, and instead of the cult of immediate ancestors we have a
long-armed, selective appropriation of whatever traditional ideas suit
our tastes. For painting the whole world goes to Renaissance Italy, for
sculpture to ancient Greece, and so on. Convention has not gained as
against tradition, but both have been transformed.
In much the same way we may distinguish between traditionalism and
conventionalism; the one meaning a dominant type of thought evidently
handed down from the past, the other a type formed by contemporary
influence—but we should not expect the distinction to be any more
fundamental than before.
Traditionalism may be looked for wherever there are long-established
groups somewhat shut out from lateral influence, either by external
conditions or by the character of their own system of ideas—in isolated
rural communities, for example, in old and close-knit organizations
like the church, or in introverted nations such as China used to be.
Conventionalism applies to well-knit types not evidently traditional,
and describes a great part of modern life.
The fact that some phases of society are more dominated by settled
types, whether traditional or conventional, than others, indicates, of
course, a certain equilibrium of influences in them, and a comparative
absence of competing ideas. This, in turn, is favored by a variety of
causes. One is a lack of individuality and self-assertiveness on the
part of the people—as the French are said to conform to types more
readily than the English or Americans. Another requisite is the lapse
of sufficient time for the type to establish itself and mould men’s
actions into conformity; even fashion cannot be made in a minute.
A third is that there should be enough interest in the matter that
non-conformity may be noticed and disapproved; and yet not enough
interest to foster originality. We are most imitative when we notice
but do not greatly care. Still another favoring condition is the habit
of deference to some authority, which may impose the type by example.
Thus the educated classes of England are, perhaps, more conventional in
dress and manner than the corresponding classes in the United States.
If so, the explanation is probably not in any intrinsic difference
of individuality, but in conditions more or less favorable to the
ripening of types; such as the comparative newness and confusion of
American civilization, the absence of an acknowledged upper class to
set an authoritative example, and a certain lack of interest in the
externals of life which our restlessness seems to foster.[152] On the
other hand, it must be said that the insecurity of position and more
immediate dependence upon the opinion of one’s fellows, which exist
in America, have a tendency toward conventionalism, because they make
the individual more eager to appear well in the eyes of others. It is
a curious fact, which may illustrate this principle, that the House
of Commons, the more democratic branch of the British legislature, is
described as more conventional than the House of Lords. Probably if
standards were sufficiently developed in America there would be no more
difficulty in enforcing them than in England.
Perhaps we should hit nearest the truth if we said that American life
had conventions of its own, vaguer than the British and putting less
weight on forms and more on fellow-feeling, but not necessarily less
cogent.
FOOTNOTES:
[141] Gabriel Tarde, Les lois de l’imitation; English translation The
Laws of Imitation.
[142] Democracy in America, vol. ii, book iii, chap. 21.
[143] The Works of Edmund Burke (Boston, 1884), vol. iii, p. 277.
[144] Amenomori in the Atlantic Monthly, Oct., 1904.
[145] French Traits. P. G. Hamerton’s works, especially his French and
English, are also full of suggestion.
[146] French Traits, page 284.
[147] Page 295.
[148] Page 295.
[149] _Idem_, page 304.
[150] Page 64.
[151] _Imitation-coutume_ and _imitation-mode_.
[152] Americans should notice that what they are apt to call the
snobbishness of the English middle class—their anxiety to imitate those
whom they regard as social superiors—has its good result in producing
a discipline in which many of us are somewhat grossly lacking. It may
be better, in manners for instance, that people should adopt a standard
from questionable motives than that they should have no standard at
all. The trouble with us is the prevalence of a sprawling, gossiping
self-content that does not know or care whether such things as manners,
art and literature exist or not.
CHAPTER XXX
FORMALISM AND DISORGANIZATION
THE NATURE OF FORMALISM—ITS EFFECT UPON PERSONALITY—FORMALISM
IN MODERN LIFE—DISORGANIZATION, “INDIVIDUALISM”—HOW IT AFFECTS
THE INDIVIDUAL—RELATION TO FORMALISM—“INDIVIDUALISM” IMPLIES
DEFECTIVE SYMPATHY—CONTEMPORARY “INDIVIDUALISM”—RESTLESSNESS UNDER
DISCOMFORT—THE BETTER ASPECT OF DISORGANIZATION.
Too much mechanism in society gives us something for which there
are many names, slightly different in meaning, as institutionalism,
formalism, traditionalism, conventionalism, ritualism, bureaucracy
and the like. It is by no means easy, however, to determine whether
mechanism is in excess or not. It becomes an evil, no doubt, when it
interferes with growth and adaptation, when it suppresses individuality
and stupefies or misdirects the energies of human nature. But just when
this is the case is likely not to be clear until the occasion is long
past and we can see the matter in the perspective of history.
Thus, in religion, it is well that men should adhere to the creeds
and ritual worked out in the past for spiritual edification, so long
as these do, on the whole, fulfil their function; and it is hard
to fix the time—not the same for different churches, classes or
individuals—when they cease to do this. But it is certain that they
die, in time, like all tissue, and if not cleared away presently rot.
It has been well said that formalism is “an excess of the organ of
language.”[153] The aim of all organization is to express human
nature, and it does this through a system of symbols, which are the
embodiment and vehicle of the idea. So long as spirit and symbol are
vitally united and the idea is really conveyed, all is well, but so
fast as they are separated the symbol becomes an empty shell, to which,
however, custom, pride or interest may still cling. It then supplants
rather than conveys the reality.
Underlying all formalism, indeed, is the fact that it is psychically
cheap; it substitutes the outer for the inner as more tangible, more
capable of being held before the mind without fresh expense of thought
and feeling, more easily extended, therefore, and impressed upon
the multitude. Thus in our own architecture or literature we have
innumerable cheap, unfelt repetitions of forms that were significant
and beautiful in their time and place.
The effect of formalism upon personality is to starve its higher life
and leave it the prey of apathy, self-complacency, sensuality and
the lower nature in general. A formalized religion and a formalized
freedom are, notoriously, the congenial dwelling-place of depravity and
oppression.
When a system of this sort is thoroughly established, as in the case of
the later Roman Empire, it confines the individual mind as in a narrow
cage by supplying it with only one sort of suggestions. The variation
of ideas and the supplanting of old types by new can begin only by
individuals getting hold of suggestions that conflict with those of
the ruling system; and in the absence of this an old type may go on
reproducing itself indefinitely, individuals seeming no more to it
than the leaves of a tree, which drop in the autumn and in the spring
are replaced by others indistinguishable from them. It “breeds true”
on the same principle that wild pigeons, long kept to a fixed type by
natural limitations, are less variable than domestic species, in whose
recent past there have been elements of change.
Among the Hindoos, for instance, a child is brought up from infancy in
subjection to ceremonies and rites which stamp upon him the impression
of a fixed and immemorial system. They control the most minute details
of his life, and leave little room for choice either on his part or
that of his parents. There is no attempt to justify tradition by
reason: custom as such is obligatory.
Intolerance goes very naturally with formalism, since to a mind in the
unresisted grasp of a fixed system of thought anything that departs
from that system must appear irrational and absurd. The lowest Chinaman
unaffectedly despises the foreigner, of whatever rank, as a vulgar
barbarian, just as Christians used to despise the Jews, and the Jews,
in their time, the Samaritans. Tolerance comes in along with peaceful
discussion, when there is a competition of various ways of thinking, no
one of which is strong enough to suppress the others.
In America and western Europe at the present day there is a great deal
of formalism, but it is, on the whole, of a partial and secondary
character, existing rather from the inadequacy of vital force than as
a ruling principle. The general state of thought favors adaptation,
because we are used to it and have found it on the whole beneficial.
We expect, for example, that a more vital and flexible form of
organization will supplant the rigid systems of Russia and the Orient,
and whatever in our own world is analogous to these.
But dead mechanism is too natural a product of human conditions not to
exist at all times, and we may easily find it to-day in the church, in
politics, in education, industry and philanthropy; wherever there is a
lack of vital thought and sentiment to keep the machinery pliant to its
work.
Thus our schools, high and low, exhibit a great deal of it. Routine
methods, here as everywhere, are a device for turning out cheap work
in large quantities, and the temptation to use them, in the case of
a teacher who has too much to do, or is required to do that which he
does not understand or believe in, is almost irresistible. Indeed, they
are too frequently inculcated by principals and training schools, in
contempt of the fact that the one essential thing in real teaching is
a personal expression between teacher and pupil. Drill is easy for one
who has got the knack of it, just because it requires nothing vital or
personal, but is a convenient appliance for getting the business done
with an appearance of success and little trouble to any one.
Even universities have much of this sort of cant. In literature, for
instance, whether ancient or modern, English or foreign, little that
is vital is commonly imparted. Compelled by his position to teach
_something_ to large and diverse classes, the teacher is led to fix
upon certain matters—such as grammar, metres, or the biographies of
the authors—whose definiteness suits them for the didactic purpose,
and drill them into the student; while the real thing, the sentiments
that are the soul of literature, are not communicated. If the teacher
himself feels them, which is often the case, the fact that they cannot
be reduced to formulas and tested by examinations discourages him from
dwelling upon them.
In like manner our whole system of commerce and industry is formal in
the sense that it is a vast machine grinding on and on in a blind way
which is often destructive of the human nature for whose service it
exists. Mammon—as in the painting by Watts—is not a fiend, wilfully
crushing the woman’s form that lies under his hand, but only a somewhat
hardened man of the world, looking in another direction and preoccupied
with the conduct of business upon business principles.
A curious instance of the same sort of thing is the stereotyping
of language by the cheap press and the habit of hasty reading.
The newspapers are called upon to give a maximum of commonplace
information for a minimum of attention, and in doing this are led to
adopt a small standard vocabulary and a uniform arrangement of words
and sentences. All that requires fresh thought, either from reader
or writer, is avoided to the greater comfort of both. The telegraph
plays a considerable part in this, and an observer familiar with its
technique points out how it puts a premium on long but unmistakable
words, on conventional phrases (for which the operators have brief
signs) and on a sentence structure so obvious that it cannot be upset
by mistakes in punctuation.[154] In this way our newspapers, and the
magazines and books that partake of their character, are the seat of a
conventionalism perhaps as destructive of the spirit of literature as
ecclesiasticism is of the spirit of Christianity.
The apparent opposite of formalism, but in reality closely akin to
it, is disorganization or disintegration, often, though inaccurately,
called “individualism.”[155] One is mechanism supreme, the other
mechanism going to pieces; and both are in contrast to that harmony
between human nature and its instruments which is desirable.
In this state of things general order and discipline are lacking.
Though there may be praiseworthy persons and activities, society as
a whole wants unity and rationality, like a picture which is good in
details but does not make a pleasing composition. Individuals and
special groups appear to be working too much at cross purposes; there
is a “reciprocal struggle of discordant powers” but the “harmony of the
universe” does not emerge. As good actors do not always make a good
troupe nor brave soldiers a good army, so a nation or a historical
epoch—say Italy in the Renaissance—may be prolific in distinguished
persons and scattered achievements but somewhat futile and chaotic as a
system.
Disorganization appears in the individual as a mind without cogent and
abiding allegiance to a whole, and without the larger principles of
conduct that flow from such allegiance. The better aspect of this is
that the lack of support may stimulate a man to greater activity and
independence, the worse that the absence of social standards is likely
to lower his plane of achievement and throw him back upon sensuality
and other primitive impulses: also that, if he is of a sensitive fibre,
he is apt to be overstrained by the contest with untoward conditions.
How soothing and elevating it is to breathe the atmosphere of some
large and quiet discipline. I remember feeling this in reading Lord
Roberts’ Forty-one Years in India, a book pervaded with one great and
simple thought, the Anglo-Indian service, which dominates all narrow
considerations and gives people a worthy ideal to live by. How rarely,
in our day, is a book or a man dominated by restful and unquestioned
faith in anything!
The fact that great personalities often appear in disordered times
may seem to be a contradiction of the principle that the healthy
development of individuals is one with that of institutions. Thus
the Italian Renaissance, which was a time of political disorder and
religious decay, produced the greatest painters and sculptors of modern
times, and many great personalities in literature and statesmanship.
But the genius which may appear in such a period is always, in one
point of view, the fruitage of a foregoing and traditional development,
never a merely personal phenomenon. That this was true of Renaissance
art needs no exposition; like every great achievement it was founded
upon organization.
It is no doubt the case, however, that there is a spur in the struggles
of a confused time which may excite a few individuals to heroic
efforts and accomplishment, just as a fire or a railroad disaster may
be the occasion of heroism; and so the disorder of the Renaissance
was perhaps one cause of the men of genius, as well as of the
demoralization which they did not escape.
It looks at first sight as if formalism and disorganization were as far
apart as possible, but in fact they are closely connected, the latter
being only the next step after the former in a logical sequence—the
decay of a body already dead. Formalism goes very naturally
with sensuality, avarice, selfish ambition, and other traits of
disorganization, because the merely formal institution does not enlist
and discipline the soul of the individual, but takes hold of him by
the outside, his personality being left to torpor or to irreverent and
riotous activity. So in the later centuries of the Roman Empire, when
its system was most rigid, the people became unpatriotic, disorderly
and sensual.
In the same way a school whose discipline is merely formal, not
engaging the interest and good-will of the scholar, is pretty certain
to turn out unruly boys and girls, because whatever is most personal
and vital in them becomes accustomed to assert itself in opposition
to the system. And so in a church where external observance has been
developed at the expense of personal judgment, the individual conforms
to the rite and then feels free for all kinds of self-indulgence.
In general the lower “individualism” of our time, the ruthless
self-assertion which is so conspicuous, for example, in business, is
not something apart from our institutions but expresses the fact that
they are largely formal and unhuman, not containing and enlarging the
soul of the individual.
The real opposite of both formalism and disorder is that wholesome
relation between individuality and the institution in which each
supports the other, the latter contributing a stable basis for the
vitality and variation of the former.
From one point of view disorganization is a lack of communication and
social consciousness, a defect in the organ of language, as formalism
is an excess. There is always, I suppose, a larger whole; the question
is whether the individual thinks and feels it vividly through some sort
of sympathetic contact; if he does he will act as a member of it.
In the writings of one of the most searching and yet hopeful critics
of our times[156] we find that “individualism” is identified primarily
with an isolation of sentiment, like that of the scholar in his study,
the business man in his office or the mechanic who does not feel
the broader meaning of his work. The opposite of it is the life of
shoulder-to-shoulder sympathy and coöperation, in which the desire
for separate power or distinction is lost in the overruling sense of
common humanity. And the logical remedy for “individualism” is sought
in that broadening of the spirit by immediate contact with the larger
currents of life, which is the aim of the social settlement and similar
movements.
This is, indeed, an inspiring and timely ideal, but let us hold it
without forgetting that specialized and lonesome endeavor, indeed
even individual pride and self-seeking, have also their uses. If we
dwell too exclusively upon the we-feeling and the loss of the one in
the many, we may lapse into a structureless emotionalism. Eye-to-eye
fellowship and the pride of solitary achievement are both essential,
each in its own way, to human growth, and either is capable of
over-indulgence. We need the most erect individual with the widest base
of sympathy.
In so far as it is true of our time that the larger interests of
society are not impressed upon the individual, so that his private
impulses coöperate with the public good, it is a time of moral
disintegration. A well-ordered community is like a ship in which
each officer and seaman has confidence in his fellows and in the
captain, and is well accustomed to do his duty with no more than
ordinary grumbling. All hangs together, and is subject to reason in
the form of long-tried rules of navigation and discipline. Virtue is
a system and men do heroic acts as part of the day’s work and without
self-consciousness. But suppose that the ship goes to pieces—let us
say upon an iceberg—then the orderly whole is broken up and officers,
seamen and passengers find themselves struggling miscellaneously in the
water. Rational control and the virtue that is habit being gone, each
one is thrown back upon his undisciplined impulses. Survival depends
not upon wisdom or goodness—as it largely does in a social system—but
upon ruthless force, and the best may probably perish.
Here is “individualism” in the lowest sense, and it is the analogue
of this which is said, not without some reason, to pervade our own
society. Old institutions are passing away and better ones, we hope,
are preparing to take their place, but in the meantime there is a
lack of that higher discipline which prints the good of the whole upon
the heart of the member. In a traditional order one is accustomed from
childhood to regard usage, the authority of elders and the dominant
institutions as the rule of life. “So it must be” is one’s unconscious
conviction, and, like the seaman, he does wise and heroic things
without knowing it. But in our own time there is for many persons, if
not most, no authoritative canon of life, and for better or worse we
are ruled by native impulse and by that private reason which may be so
weak when detached from a rational whole. The higher morality, if it is
to be attained at all, must be specially thought out; and of the few
who can do this a large part exhaust their energy in thinking and do
not practise with any heartiness the truths they perceive.
We find, then, that people have to make up their own minds upon their
duties as wives, husbands, mothers and daughters; upon commercial
obligation and citizenship; upon the universe and the nature and
authority of God. Inevitably many of us make a poor business of it.
It is too much. It is as if each one should sit down to invent a
language for himself: these things should be thought out gradually,
coöperatively each adding little and accepting much. That great
traditions should rapidly go to pieces may be a necessary phase of
evolution and a disguised blessing, but the present effect is largely
distraction and demoralization.
In particular, we notice that few who have burdens to bear are much
under the control of submissive tradition, but every one asks “Why
must I bear this?” and the pain of trying to see why is often worse
than the evil itself. There is commonly no obvious reason, and the
answer is often a sense of rebellion and a bitterness out of which
comes, perhaps, recklessness, divorce, or suicide.
Why am I poor while others are rich? Why do I have to do work I do not
like? Why should I be honest when others are unscrupulous? Why should I
wear myself out bearing and rearing children? Why should I be faithful
to my husband or wife when we are not happy together, and another would
please me better? Why should I believe in a good God when all I know
is a bad world? Why should I live when I wish to die? Never, probably,
were so many asking such questions as this and finding no clear answer.
There have been other times of analogous confusion, but it could never
have penetrated so deeply into the masses as it does in these days of
universal stir and communication.
How contemptible these calculations seem in comparison with the
attitude of the soldier, who knows that he must suffer privation and
not improbably death, and yet faces the prospect quite cheerfully, with
a certain pride in his self-devotion. In this spirit, evidently, all
the duties of life ought to be taken up. But the soldier, the seaman,
the fireman, the brakeman, the doctor and others whose trade leads
them into obvious peril have one great advantage: they know what their
duty is and have no other thought than to do it; there is no mental
distraction to complicate the situation. And as fast as principles
become settled and habits formed, people will be as heroic in other
functions as they are in these.
We may apply to many in our own time the words of Burckhardt in
describing the disorganization of the Renaissance: “The sight of
victorious egoism in others drives him to defend his own right by his
own arm. And, while thinking to restore his inward equilibrium, he
falls, through the vengeance which he executes, into the hands of the
powers of darkness.” That is, we think we must be as selfish as other
people, but find that selfishness is misery. I notice that many men,
even of much natural sympathy and fellow-feeling, have accepted “every
man for himself” as a kind of dogma, making themselves believe that it
is the necessary rule of a competitive society, and practising it with
a kind of fanaticism which goes against their better natures. Perhaps
the sensitive are more apt to do this than others—because they are more
upset by the spectacle of “victorious egoism” around them. But the true
good of the individual is found only in subordinating himself to a
rational whole; and in turning against others he destroys himself.
The embittered and distracted individual must be a bad citizen. There
is the same kind of moral difference between those who feel life as
a rational whole, and so have some sort of a belief in God, as there
is between an army that believes in its commander and one that does
not. In either case the feeling does much to bring about its own
justification.
The fact that the breaking up of traditions throws men back upon
immediate human nature has, however, its good as well as its bad side.
It may obscure those larger truths that are the growth of time and
may let loose pride, sensuality and scepticism; but it also awakens
the child in man and a childlike pliability to the better as well as
the worse in natural impulse. We may look, among people who have lost
the sense of tradition, for the sort of virtues, as well as of vices,
that we find on the frontier: for plain dealing, love of character
and force, kindness, hope, hospitality and courage. Alongside of an
extravagant growth of sensuality, pride and caprice, we have about us
a general cult of childhood and womanhood, a vast philanthropy, and
an interest in everything relating to the welfare of the masses of
the people. The large private gifts to philanthropic and educational
purposes, and the fact that a great deal of personal pride is mingled
with these gifts, are equally characteristic of the time.
And, after all, there is never any general state of extreme
disintegration. Such as our time suffers from in art and social
relations is chiefly the penalty of a concentration of thought upon
material production and physical science. In these fields there is
no lack of unified and cumulative endeavor—though unhuman in some
aspects—resulting in total achievement. If we have not Dante and gothic
architecture, we have Darwin and the modern railway. And as fast as the
general mind turns to other aims we may hope that our chaotic material
will take on order.
FOOTNOTES:
[153] The Poet. Emerson.
[154] See the article by R. L. O’Brien in the Atlantic Monthly, Oct.,
1904.
[155] Inaccurately, because the full development of the individual
requires organization
[156] Jane Addams.
CHAPTER XXXI
DISORGANIZATION: THE FAMILY
OLD AND NEW RÉGIMES IN THE FAMILY—THE DECLINING BIRTH-RATE—“SPOILED”
CHILDREN—THE OPENING OF NEW CAREERS TO WOMEN—EUROPEAN AND
AMERICAN POINTS OF VIEW—PERSONAL FACTORS IN DIVORCE—INSTITUTIONAL
FACTORS—CONCLUSION.
The mediæval family, like other mediæval institutions, was dominated
by comparatively settled traditions which reflected the needs of
the general system of society. Marriage was thought of chiefly as
an alliance of interests, and was arranged by the ruling members
of the families concerned on grounds of _convenance_, the personal
congeniality of the parties being little considered.
We know that this view of marriage has still considerable force among
the more conservative classes of European society, and that royalty or
nobility, on the one hand, and the peasantry, on the other, adhere to
the idea that it is a family rather than a personal function, which
should be arranged on grounds of rank and wealth. In France it is
hardly respectable to make a romantic marriage, and Mr. Hamerton tells
of a young woman who was indignant at a rumor that she had been wedded
for love, insisting that it had been strictly a matter of _convenance_.
He also mentions a young man who was compelled to ask his mother which
of two sisters he had just met was to be his wife.[157]
Along with this subordination of choice in contracting marriage
generally went an autocratic family discipline. Legally the wife and
children had no separate rights, their personality being merged in
that of the husband and father, while socially the latter was rather
their master than their companion. His rule, however—though it was no
doubt harsh and often brutal, judged by our notions—was possibly not so
arbitrary and whimsical as would be the exercise of similar authority
in our day; since he was himself subordinate not only to social
superiors, but still more to traditional ideas, defining his own duties
and those of his household, which he felt bound to carry out. The whole
system was authoritative, admitting little play of personal choice.
Evidently the drift of modern life is away from this state of things.
The decay of settled traditions, embracing not only those relating
directly to the family but also the religious and economic ideas by
which these were supported, has thrown us back upon the unschooled
impulses of human nature. In entering upon marriage the personal tastes
of the couple demand gratification, and, right or wrong, there is no
authority strong enough to hold them in check. Nor, if upon experience
it turns out that personal tastes are not gratified, is there commonly
any insuperable obstacle to a dissolution of the tie. Being married,
they have children so long as they find it, on the whole, agreeable
to their inclinations to do so, but when this point is reached they
proceed to exercise choice by refusing to bear and rear any more. And
as the spirit of choice is in the air, the children are not slow to
inhale it and to exercise their own wills in accordance with the same
law of impulse their elders seem to follow. “Do as you please so long
as you do not evidently harm others” is the only rule of ethics that
has much life; there is little regard for any higher discipline, for
the slowly built traditions of a deeper right and wrong which cannot be
justified to the feelings of the moment.
Among the phases of this domestic “individualism” or relapse to impulse
are a declining birth-rate among the comfortable classes, some lack of
discipline and respect in children, a growing independence of women
accompanied by alleged neglect of the family, and an increase of
divorce.
The causes of decline in the birth-rate are clearly psychological,
being, in general, that people prefer ambition and luxury to the large
families that would interfere with them.
Freedom of opportunity diffuses a restless desire to rise in the
world, beneficent from many points of view but by no means favorable
to natural increase. Men demand more of life in the way of personal
self-realization than in the past, and it takes a longer time and more
energy to get it, the consequence being that marriage is postponed and
the birth-rate in marriage deliberately restricted. The young people of
the well-to-do classes, among whom ambition is most developed, commonly
feel poorer in regard to this matter than the hand-workers, so that we
find in England, for instance, that the professional men marry at an
average age of thirty-one, while miners marry at twenty-four. Moreover,
while the hand-working classes, both on the farms and in towns, expect
to make their children more than pay for themselves after they are
fourteen years old, a large family thus becoming an investment for
future profit, the well-to-do, on the contrary, see in their children a
source of indefinitely continuous expense. And the trend of things is
bringing an ever larger proportion of the people within the ambitious
classes and subject to this sort of checks.
The spread of luxury, or even comfort, works in the same direction by
creating tastes and habits unfavorable to the bearing and rearing of
many children. Among those whose life, in general, is hard these things
are not harder than the rest, and a certain callousness of mind that
is apt to result from monotonous physical labor renders people less
subject to anxiety, as a rule, than those who might appear to have
less occasion for it. The joy of children, the “luxury of the poor,”
may also appear brighter from the dulness and hardship against which
it is relieved. But as people acquire the habit, or at least the hope,
of comfort they become aware that additional children mean a sacrifice
which they often refuse to make.
These influences go hand-in-hand with that general tendency to rebel
against trouble which is involved in the spirit of choice. In former
days women accepted the bearing of children and the accompanying cares
and privations as a matter of course; it did not occur to them that
anything else was possible. Now, being accustomed to choose their
life, they demand a reason why they should undergo hardships; and
since the advantages which are to follow are doubtful and remote, and
the suffering near and obvious, they are not unlikely to refuse. Too
commonly they have no inwrought principles and training that dispose
them to submit.
The distraction of choice grievously increases the actual burden
and stress upon women, for it is comparatively easy to put up with
the inevitable. What with moral strain of this sort and the anxious
selection among conflicting methods of nurture and education it
possibly costs the mother of to-day more psychical energy to raise four
children than it did her grandmother to raise eight.
It would be strange if children were not hospitable to the modern
sentiment that one will is as good as another, except as the other
may be demonstrably wiser in regard to the matter in hand. Willing
submission to authority as such, or sense of the value of discipline
as a condition of the larger and less obvious well-being of society,
is hardly to be expected from childish reasoning, and must come, if at
all, as the unconscious result of a training which reflects general
sentiment and custom. It is institutional in its nature, not visibly
reasonable.
But the child, in our day, finds no such institution, no general state
of sentiment such as exists in Japan and existed in our own past, which
fills the mind from infancy with suggestions that parents are to be
reverenced and obeyed; nor do parents ordinarily do much to instil this
by training. Probably, so great is the power of general opinion even
in childhood, they would hardly succeed if they tried, but as a rule
they do not seriously try. Being themselves accustomed to the view that
authority must appeal to the reason of the subject, they see nothing
strange in the fact that their children treat them as equals and
demand to know “Why?”
The fond attention which parents give to their children is often of a
sort to overstimulate their self-consequence. This constantly asking
them, What would you like? Shall we do this or that? Where do you want
to go? and so on, though amiable on our part, does the child little
good. The old practice of keeping children at a distance, whatever its
evils, was more apt to foster reverence.
Among hand-workers, especially in the country, the work being more
obvious and often shared by the whole family, the pressure of necessary
labor makes a kind of discipline for all, and the children are more
likely to see that there are rules and conditions of life above their
immediate pleasure. Social play, as we have seen, may also do much
for this perception. But this visible control of a higher law has a
decreasing part in modern life, especially with the well-to-do classes,
whose labors are seldom such as children may share, or even understand.
In this, as in so many other respects, we are approaching a higher kind
of life at the cost of incidental demoralization. The modern family
at its best, with its intimate sympathy and its discipline of love,
is of a higher type than the family of an older _régime_. “I never,”
said Thackeray, “saw people on better terms with each other, more
frank, affectionate, and cordial, than the parents and the grown-up
young folks in the United States. And why? Because the children were
spoiled, to be sure.”[158] But where this ideal is not reached, there
is apt to be a somewhat disastrous failure which makes one regret the
autocratic and traditional order. Not merely is discipline lacking,
but the affection which might be supposed to go with indulgence is
turned to indifference, if not contempt. As a rule we love those we can
look up to, those who stand for the higher ideal. In old days parents
shared somewhat in that divinity with which tradition hedged the great
of the earth, and might receive a reverence not dependent upon their
personality; and even to-day they are likely to be better loved if
they exact respect—just as an officer is better loved who enforces
discipline and is not too familiar with his soldiers. Human nature
needs something to look up to, and it is a pity when parents do not in
part supply this need for their children.
In short, the child, like the woman, helps to bear the often grievous
burden of disorganization; bears it, among the well-to-do classes, in
an ill-regulated life, in lack of reverence and love, in nervousness
and petulance; as well as in premature and stunting labor among the
poor.
The opening of new careers to women and a resulting economic
independence approaching that of men is another phase of
“individualism” that has its worse and better aspects. In general it
has, through the fuller self-expression of women, most beneficial
reactions both upon family life and society at large, but creates some
trouble in the way of domestic reluctance and discontent.
The disposition to reject marriage altogether may be set aside as
scarcely existent. The marriage rate shows little decline, though the
average age is somewhat advanced. The wage-earning occupations of
women are mostly of a temporary character, and the great majority of
domestic servants, shop and factory girls, clerks, typewriters and
teachers marry sooner or later. There is no reason to doubt that a
congenial marriage continues to be the almost universal feminine ideal.
A more real problem, perhaps, is found in the excessive requirements,
in the way of comfort and refinement, that young women are said to
cherish. In the United States their education, so far as general
culture is concerned, outstrips that of men, something like
three-fifths of our high school pupils being girls, while even in
the higher institutions the study of history, foreign languages and
English literature is largely given over to women. A certain sense
of superiority coming from this state of things probably causes the
rejection of some honest clerks or craftsmen by girls who can hardly
look for a better offer; and it has a tendency toward the cultivation
of refinement at the expense of children where marriage does occur.
It need hardly be said, however, that aggressive idealism on the part
of women is in itself no bad thing, and that it does harm only where
ill-directed. Hardly anything, for instance, would be more salutary
than the general enforcement by women of a higher moral standard upon
the men who wish to marry them.
And certainly nothing in modern civilization is more widely and subtly
beneficent than the enlargement of women in social function. It means
that a half of human nature is newly enfranchised, instructed and
enabled to become a more conscious and effective factor in life. The
ideals of home and the care of children, in spite of pessimists, are
changing for the better, and the work of women in independent careers
is largely in the direction of much-needed social service—education
and philanthropy in the largest sense of the words. Any one familiar
with these movements knows that much of the intellectual and most of
the emotional force back of them is that of women. One may say that the
maternal instinct has been set free and organized on a vast scale, for
the activities in which women most excel are those inspired by sympathy
with children and with the weak or suffering classes.
To the continental European, accustomed to a society in which the
functions and conventions of men and women are sharply distinguished
and defined by tradition, it seems that Americans break down a natural
and salutary differentiation, making women masculine and men feminine
by a too indiscriminate association and competition. No doubt there is
some ground for distinct standards and education, and in the general
crumbling of traditions and sway of a somewhat doctrinaire idea of
equality some “achieved distinctions” of value may have been lost sight
of. Like other social differentiations, however, this is one that can
no longer be determined by authority, but must work itself out in a
free play of experiment. As Mr. Ellis says, “The hope of our future
civilization lies in the development, in equal freedom, of both the
masculine and feminine elements in life.”[159]
Perhaps, also, the masculine element, as being on the whole more
rational and stable, should be the main source of government, keeping
in order the emotionality more commonly dominant in women: and it may
appear that this controlling function is ill-performed in America. It
should be remembered, however, that with us the emancipation of women
comes chiefly from male initiative and is a voluntary fostering of _das
ewig Weibliche_ out of love and respect for it. And also that most
European societies govern women by coercive laws or conventions and, in
the lower classes, even by blows. Americans have almost wholly foregone
these extrinsic aids, aiming at a higher or voluntary discipline, and
if American women are, after all, quite as well guided, on the whole,
as those of Europe, it is no mean achievement.
There are in general two sorts of forces, one personal and one
institutional, which hold people together in wedlock. By the personal
I mean those which spring more directly from natural impulse, and may
be roughly summed up as affection and common interest in children. The
institutional are those that come more from the larger organization of
society, such as economic interdependence of husband and wife, or the
state of public sentiment, tradition and law.
As regards affection, present conditions should apparently be
favorable to the strength of the bond. Since personal choice is so
little interfered with, and the whole matter conducted with a view
to congeniality, it would seem that a high degree of congeniality
must, on the whole, be secured. And, indeed, this is without much
doubt the case: nowhere probably, is there so large a proportion of
couples living together in love and confidence as in those countries
where marriage is most free. Even if serious friction arises, the
fact that each has chosen the other without constraint favors a sense
of responsibility for the relation, and a determination to make it
succeed that might be lacking in an arranged marriage. We know that if
we do not marry happily it is our own fault, and the more character and
self-respect we have the more we try to make the best of our venture.
There can hardly be a general feeling that marriage is one thing and
love another, such as may prevail under the rule of _convenance_.
Yet it is not inconsistent to say that this aim at love increases
divorce. The theory being that the contracting parties are to be made
happy, then, if they are not, it seems to follow that the relation is
a failure and should cease: the brighter the ideal the darker the fact
by contrast. Where interest and custom rule marriage those who enter
into it may not expect congeniality, or, if they do, they feel that it
is secondary and do not dream of divorce because it is not achieved.
The woman marries because her parents tell her to, because marriage is
her career, and because she desires a wedding and to be mistress of a
household; the man because he wants a household and children and is
not indifferent to the dowry. These tangible aims, of which one can be
fairly secure beforehand, give stability where love proves wanting.
And while freedom in well-ordered minds tends toward responsibility and
the endeavor to make the best of a chosen course, in the ill-ordered
it is likely to become an impulsiveness which is displayed equally
in contracting and in breaking off marriage without good cause. The
conditions of our time give an easy rein to undisciplined wills, and
one index of their activity is the divorce rate. Bad training in
childhood is a large factor in this, neglected or spoiled children
making bad husbands or wives, and probably furnishing the greater
number of the divorced. Common observation seems to show that the
latter are seldom people of thoroughly wholesome antecedents.
It may not be amiss to add that personal affection is at the best an
inadequate foundation for marriage. To expect that one person should
make another happy or good is requiring too much of human nature. Both
parties ought to be subject to some higher idea, in reverence for
which they may rise above their own imperfection: there ought to be
something in the way of religion in the case. A remark which Goethe
made of poetry might well be applied to personal love: “It is a very
good companion of life, but in no way competent to guide it”;[160] and
because people have no higher thought to shelter them in disappointment
is frequently the reason that marriage proves a failure.
As regards institutional bonds there is of course a great relaxation.
Thus economic interdependence declines with the advance of
specialization. The home industries are mostly gone, and every year
more things are bought that used to be made in the house. Little is
left but cooking, and that, either as a task of the wife or in the
shape of the Domestic Service Question, is so troublesome that many are
eager to see it follow the rest. At one time marriage was, for women,
about the only way to a respectable maintenance, while to men a good
housewife was equally an economic necessity. Now this is true only of
the farming population, and less true of them than it used to be: in
the towns the economic considerations are mostly opposed to married
life.
Besides making husband and wife less necessary to each other, these
changes tend to make married women restless. Nothing works more for
sanity and contentment than a reasonable amount of necessary and
absorbing labor; disciplining the mind and giving one a sense of
being of use in the world. It seems a paradox to say that idleness is
exhausting, but there is much truth in it, especially in the case of
sensitive and eager spirits. A regular and necessary task rests the
will by giving it assurance, while the absence of such a task wearies
it by uncertainty and futile choice. Just as a person who follows a
trail through the woods will go further with less exertion than one who
is finding his way, so we all need a foundation of routine, and the
lack of this among women of the richer classes is a chief cause of the
restless, exacting, often hysterical, spirit, harassing to its owner
and every one else, which tends toward discontent, indiscretion and
divorce.
The old traditional subordination on the part of the wife had its uses,
like other decaying structures of the past; and however distasteful to
modern ideas of freedom, was a factor in holding the family together.
For, after all, no social organization can be expected to subsist
without some regular system of government. We say that the modern
family is a democracy; and this sounds very well; but anarchy is
sometimes a more correct description. A well-ordered democracy has
a constitution and laws, prescribing the rights and duties of the
various members of the state, and providing a method of determining
controversies: the family, except as we recognize within reasonable
limits the authority of the husband and father, has nothing of the
sort. So long as the members are one in mind and feeling there is
an unconscious harmony which has nothing to do with authority; but
with even slight divergence comes the need of definite control.
What would happen on shipboard if the captain had to govern by mere
personal ascendency, without the backing of maritime law and custom?
Evidently there would be mutinies, as among pirate crews, which only an
uncommonly strong man could quell; and the family is often in a similar
condition.[161]
The relaxation of moral sentiment regarding marriage by migrations and
other sorts of displacement is easily traced in statistics, which show
that divorce is more frequent in new countries, in cities—peopled by
migration—and in the industrial and commercial classes most affected
by economic change. To have an effective public opinion holding people
to their duty it is important that men should live long in one place
and in one group, inheriting traditional ideas and enforcing them
upon one another. All breaking up of old associations involves an
“individualism” which is nowhere more active than in family relations.
The same principles go to explain diminished control by the law and the
church. Thus we notice that the states of the American Union, having
made their marriage laws in comparative independence of the English
tradition and in harmony with a relaxing public sentiment, have much
divorce; while in Canada the restraining hand of that tradition has
kept the law conservative and made divorce difficult and rare. The
surprising contrast in this regard between the two sides of the Detroit
or St. Lawrence rivers is only partly explained by the different social
traits of the people.
Christian teaching is the chief source of the ideal of marriage as a
sacred and almost indissoluble bond, and church organization has been
the main agent in enforcing this ideal. The Roman Catholic church
has never admitted the possibility of absolute divorce, and to her
authority, chiefly, is due its absence in Spain and Italy; while in
England the Established Church, not much behind Rome in strictness,
has been perhaps the chief cause of conservatism in English law and
sentiment. And the other Protestant churches, though more liberal, are
conservative in comparison with the drift of popular feeling. So the
fact, needless to discuss in this connection, that the disciplinary
authority of the church has declined, makes directly for the increase
of divorce.
The relaxation of the family is due, then, to changes progressive on
the whole, but involving much incidental demoralization; being in
general those arising from a somewhat rapid decay of old traditions and
disciplines and a consequent dependence upon human impulse and reason.
The evil involved is largely old evil in a new form; it is not so much
that new troubles have arisen between husband and wife as that a new
remedy is sought for old ones. They quarreled and marriage vows were
broken quite as much in former times as now, as much in England to-day
as in America: the main difference is in the outcome.
Moreover, the matter has its brighter side; for divorce, though full of
evils, is associated with a beneficent rise in the standing of women,
of which it is to a certain degree the cause. The fact that law and
opinion now permit women to revolt against the abuse of marital power
operates widely and subtly to increase their self-respect and the
respect of others for them, and like the right of workmen to strike,
does most of its good without overt exercise.
FOOTNOTES:
[157] French and English, 357.
[158] Philip, chapter 28.
[159] Man and Woman, 396.
[160] Die Muse das Leben zwar gern begleitet, aber es keineswegs zu
leiten versteht.
[161] That the increase of divorces is due chiefly to the initiative
of the wife is seen in the fact that as they become more numerous an
increasing proportion is granted at the instance of the woman. Under
the old _régime_ the divorcing of a husband was almost unknown, the
first case in England occurring in 1801. (See the essay on Marriage
and Divorce in Mr. Bryce’s Studies in History and Jurisprudence.) In
the United States a great preponderance are now granted to wives, and
the greater the total rate the greater this preponderance. In those
states where the rate is highest the proportion is from two-thirds to
three-fourths. It is not far wrong to say that the old idea of divorce
was to rid the husband of an unfaithful wife, the new is to rid the
wife of an uncongenial or troublesome husband.
CHAPTER XXXII
DISORGANIZATION: THE CHURCH
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW OF RELIGION—THE NEED OF SOCIAL
STRUCTURE—CREEDS—WHY SYMBOLS TEND TO BECOME FORMAL—TRAITS OF A GOOD
SYSTEM OF SYMBOLS—CONTEMPORARY NEED OF RELIGION—NEWER TENDENCIES IN
THE CHURCH.
In religion, too, our day is one of confusion in institutions and
falling back upon human nature. The most notable books of the day
in this field are, first of all, studies in religious psychology.
Perceiving that the question has come to be one of the very being
and function of religion, they ignore the discussion of particular
doctrines, polities or sacraments, and seek a foundation in the nature
of the human mind.
I do not wish to follow these researches in detail: their general
outcome is reassuring. They seem to show that religion is a need
of human nature, centring, perhaps, in the craving to make life
seem rational and good. As thought it is belief regarding the power
underlying life and our relation to it; our conceptions of God and of
other divine agents serving as symbols—changing like other symbols with
the general state of thought—of this hidden reality. As feeling it is a
various body of passion and sentiment associated with this belief; such
as the sense of sin and of reconciliation; dread, awe, reverence, love
and faith. And religious action is such as expresses, in one way or
another, this sort of thought and feeling.
Like all our higher life, religion lives only by communication and
influence. Its sentiments are planted in instinct, but the soil in
which they grow is some sort of fostering community life. Higher
thought—call it intellectual, spiritual, or what you will—does not
come to us by any short and easy road, its nature being to require
preparation and outlay, to be the difficult and culminating product of
human growth. And this is quite as much a growth of the social order
as of individuals, for the individual cut off from that scaffolding of
suggestion that the aspiration of the race has gradually prepared for
him is sure to be lawless and sensual: his spiritual impulse can hardly
be more than a futile unrest, just as the untaught impulse of speech in
a deaf person produces only inarticulate cries. Much has been said of
natural religion; but if this means a religion achieved _de novo_ by
the individual mind, there is no such thing, all religion and religious
sentiment being more or less distinctly traditional.
We find, then, that the religious life always rests upon a somewhat
elaborate social structure—not necessarily a church, but something
which does in fact what the church aims to do. The higher sentiments
now possible to us are subtly evoked and nourished by language,
music, ritual and other time-wrought symbols. And even more obviously
are ideas—of God and of the larger being, of religious observance,
government and duty—matters of communal and secular growth.
The root problem of the church—as, in a sense, of all organization—is
to get the use of the symbol without the abuse. We cannot hold
our minds to the higher life without a form of thought; and forms
of thought come by traditions and usages which are apt to enchain
the spirit. “Woe unto thee thou stream of human custom”; cries St.
Augustine, “Who shall stay thy course? How long shall it be before thou
art dried up? How long wilt thou carry down the sons of Eve into that
huge and formidable ocean, which even those who are embarked on the
Tree can scarce pass over?”[162]
The iconoclastic fervor against formalism that usefully breaks out from
time to time should not make us imagine that religion can dispense with
institutions. There is in religious thought at present much of a kind
of anarchism which, in the justifiable revolt against the pretensions
of authority, is inclined to overlook the importance of tradition and
structure. Perhaps we may cite Emerson as an anarchist of this sort; he
saw the necessity of institutions, but was inclined by temperament and
experience to distrust them, and to dwell almost wholly upon freedom.
Is it not the fact, however, that the progress of religion has been
less in the perception of new truth than in bringing it home to the
many by organization? There is perhaps little in religious thought that
was not adequately expressed by occasional thinkers millenniums ago;
the gain has been in working this thought into the corporate life. The
great religions—Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Mohammedanism—are
nothing if not systems; that is to say, although based on primary needs
of human nature, their very being as widespread religions consists in
a social structure, adapted to the changing state of society, through
which these needs are met and fostered. Thus the appeal of Christianity
to the human mind may be said to have rested, in all periods, partly
on the symbolic power of a personality—so idealized and interpreted
as to be in effect a system as well as a man—and partly on a changing
but always elaborate structure of doctrines, ritual, polity, preaching
and the like. Take away these symbols and there is nothing distinctive
left. And if the whole is to go on, the system of symbols, again
renewed, must go on, too. No more in religion than in any other phase
of life can we have an inside without an outside, essence without form.
The existing creeds, formulated in a previous state of thought,
have lost that relative truth they once had and are now, for most
of us, not creeds at all, since they are incredible; but creeds
of some sort we must have. A creed may, perhaps, be defined as a
settled way of thinking about matters which are beyond the reach of
positive knowledge, but which the mind must and will think of in some
way—notably, of course, about the larger life and our relation to it.
For the majority, who are not metaphysicians, it is mere waste and
distraction to struggle unaided with these problems; we need a chart
in this sea, a practicable form of thought to live by. That competent
men should devise such forms of thought, consistent with the state of
knowledge, and that other symbols should grow up about them, is as
natural and useful as any other kind of invention. We need to believe,
and we shall believe what we can. John Addington Symonds declared
that “health of soul results from possessing a creed,” and his own
sufferings in trying to make one out of the scattered materials of his
time are typical of those of a great number of sensitive minds, many of
whom have been harassed into despair and degradation.[163] Without some
regular and common service of the ideal, something in the way of prayer
and worship, pessimism and selfishness are almost sure to encroach upon
us.
Those who teach truth in its mere abstractness can never take much
hold of the general mind, and success awaits a teaching which is
intellectually sound (that is, consistent with the clearer thought of
the day), and at the same time able, by a wealth of fit symbols, to
make itself at home in all sorts of plain minds. And it is just this
that is apt to be destructively wanting in a time of intellectual and
social change.
Why is it that the symbol encroaches and persists beyond its function?
Evidently just because it is external, capable of imitation and
repetition without fresh thought and life, so that all that is inert
and mechanical clings to it. All dull and sensual persons, all dull
and sensual moods in any person, see the form and not the substance.
The spirit, the idea, the sentiment, is plainly enough the reality
_when one is awake to see it_, but how easily we lose our hold upon
it and come to think that the real is the tangible. The symbol is
always at command: we can always attend church, go to mass, recite
prayers, contribute money, and the like; but kindness, hope, reverence,
humility, courage, have no string attached to them; they come and go
as the spirit moves; there is no insurance on them. Just as in the
schools we teach facts and formulas rather than meanings, because the
former can be received by all and readily tested, so religion becomes
external in seeking to become universal.
It is perhaps hardly necessary to recall the application of this to
Christianity. Jesus himself had no system: he felt and taught the
human sentiments that underly religion and the conduct that expresses
them. The Sermon on the Mount appears paradoxical only to sluggish,
sensual, formal states of mind and the institutions that embody them.
In our times of clearer insight it is good sense and good psychology,
expressing that enlargement of the individual to embrace the life of
others which takes place at such times. This natural Christianity,
however, is insecure in the best people, and most of us have only a
fleeting experience of it; so the teachers who wished to make a popular
system, valid for all sorts of persons and moods, were led to vulgarize
it by grounding it on miracles and mystic authority and enforcing it by
sensual rewards and punishments.
The perennial truth of what Christ taught comes precisely from the fact
that it was not a system, but an intuition and expression of higher
sentiments the need of which is a central and enduring element in our
best experience. It is this that has made it possible, in every age, to
go back to his life and words and find them still alive and potent, fit
to vitalize renewed systems. The system makers did well, too, but their
work was transient.
A good system of symbols is one which, on the whole, stands to the
group or to the individual for a higher life: merit in this matter
being relative to the particular state of mind that the symbol is to
serve. It is quite true that—
“Each age must worship its own thought of God,
More or less earthy, clarifying still
With subsidence continuous of the dregs.”[164]
Crude men must have crude symbols—even “rod or candy for child-minded
men”[165]—but these should be educational, leading up from lower forms
of thought to higher. A system that keeps men in sensualism when they
are capable of rising above it, or in dogmatism when they are ready to
think, is as bad as one that does not reach their minds at all.
At the present time all finality in religious formulas is discredited
philosophically by the idea of evolution and of the consequent
relativity of all higher truth, while, practically, free discussion
has so accustomed people to conflicting views that the exclusive and
intolerant advocacy of dogma is scarcely possible to the intelligent.
It is true, of course, that philosophical breadth and free discussion
have flourished before, only to be swept under by the forces making
for authority; but they were never so rooted in general conditions—of
communication and personal freedom—as they are now. It seems fairly
certain that the formulas of religion will henceforward be held with at
least a subconsciousness of their provisional character.
The creeds of the future are likely, also, to be simple. In all
institutions there is nowadays a tendency to exchange formulas for
principles, as being more flexible and so more enduring. The nearer
you can get to universal human nature without abandoning concreteness
the better. There is coming to be a clearer distinction of functions
between metaphysics and worship, which may enable each to be enjoyed to
the utmost without being unnecessarily mixed with the other.
The less intellectual a religious symbol is the better, because it
less confines the mind. Personality is the best symbol of all; and
after that music, art, poetry, festivity and ceremony are more enduring
and less perilous symbols than formulas of belief. Sentiments change
like ideas, but not so much and not so evidently; and the essential
exercises of religion for the mass of men are those which awaken higher
sentiment, especially those good works, in which, chiefly, the founder
of Christianity and his real followers have expressed their religious
impulse. These also are symbols, and the most potent and least illusive
of all.
It is indeed a general truth that sentiment is nearer to the core of
life than definable thought. As the rim of a wheel whirls about its
centre, so ideas and institutions whirl about the pivotal sentiments
of human nature. To define a thing is to institutionize it, to draw
it forth from the pregnant obscurity of the soul and show just how
it appears in the transient color of our particular way of thinking.
Definitions are, in their nature, short-lived.
We need religion, probably, as much as any age can have needed it. The
prevalent confusion, “the tumult of the time disconsolate,” is felt
in every mind not wholly inert as a greater or less distraction of
thought, feeling and will; and we need to be taught how to live with
joy and calm in the presence of inevitable perplexities. A certain
natural phlegm is a great advantage in these days, and better still, if
we could get it, would be religious assurance. Never was it more urgent
or more difficult to justify the ways of God to men. Our material
betterment is a great thing, and our comparative freedom a greater, but
these rather increase than diminish the need of a higher discipline in
the mind that is to use them profitably: the more opportunities the
more problems. Social betterment is like the advance of science in that
each achievement opens up new requirements. There is no prospect that
the world will ever satisfy us, and the structure of life is forever
incomplete without something to satisfy the need of the spirit for
ideas and sentiments that transcend and reconcile all particular aims
whatsoever. Mediæval religion is too unworldly, no doubt, for our use,
but all real religion has its unworldly side, and Thomas à Kempis and
the rest were right in holding that no sort of tangible achievement can
long assuage the human soul.
Still more evident is the need of religion in the form of “social
salvation,” of the moral awakening and leadership of the public mind.
Society is in want of this, and the agency that supplies the want will
have the power that goes with function—if not the church, then some
secular and perhaps hostile agency, like socialism, which is already a
rival to the church for the allegiance of the religious spirit.
Perhaps, also, there was never an age in which there was more
vital, hopeful religious aspiration and endeavor than the
present—notwithstanding that so many are astray. It is, of course, a
great advantage of the decline of forms that what survives is the more
likely to be real. The church is being transformed in the persons of
its younger and more adaptive members, and the outcome can be nothing
else than a gradual readjustment of the tradition to the real spiritual
needs of the time. It is notable that the severest critics of the
institution are reformers within its own body, and their zeal overlooks
nothing in the way of apathy or decadence.
As a matter of historical comparison the irreligion of our time is
often exaggerated. Any reader of history may perceive that formalism,
materialism and infidelity have flourished in all epochs, and as
regards America we are assured by Mr. Bryce that Christianity
influences conduct more here than in any other modern country, and
far more than in the so-called ages of faith.[166] In fact it is just
because this age is Christian in its aspirations that we hear so much
of the inadequacy of the church. People are taking religion seriously
and demanding true function in its instruments.
The church is possibly moving toward a differentiated unity, in which
the common element will be mainly sentiment—such sentiments as justice,
kindness, liberty and service. These are sufficient for good-will and
coöperation, and leave room for all the differentiation of ideas and
methods that the diversity of life requires.
With whatever faults the church is one of the great achievements of
civilization. Like the body of science or our system of transportation
and manufacture, it is the cumulative outcome of human invention and
endeavor, and is probably in no more danger of perishing than these
are. If certain parts of it break up we shall no doubt find that their
sound materials are incorporated into new structures.
FOOTNOTES:
[162] Confessions, book i, chap. 16.
[163] See his life by H. F. Brown, _passim_.
[164] J. R. Lowell, The Cathedral.
[165] _Ibid._
[166] The American Commonwealth, chap. 80.
CHAPTER XXXIII
DISORGANIZATION: OTHER TRADITIONS
DISORDER IN THE ECONOMIC SYSTEM—IN EDUCATION—IN HIGHER CULTURE——IN THE
FINE ARTS.
This same idea, of confusion and inefficiency in social functions
arising from the breaking up of old structures, might find illustration
in almost any phase of life which one might choose to investigate. The
economic system, for example, is in a state somewhat analogous to that
of the family and the church, and indeed the “industrial revolution” is
the chief seat of those phases of decay and reconstruction which most
affect the daily life of the people.
Location itself—to begin with man’s attachment to the soil—has been
so widely disturbed that possibly a majority of the people of the
civilized world are of recent migratory origin; they themselves or
their parents having moved from one land to another or from country to
city. With this goes a severing of traditions and a mixture of ideas
and races.
Still more subversive, perhaps, is the change in occupations, which
is practically universal, so that scarcely anywhere will you find
people doing the things which their grandparents did. The quiet
transmission of handicrafts in families and neighborhoods, never much
interrupted before, is now cut off, and the young are driven to look
for new trades. Nor is this merely one change, to which the world may
adapt itself once for all, but a series, a slide, to which there is
no apparent term. Seldom is the skill learned in youth available in
age, and thousands of men have seen one trade after another knocked
out of their hands by the unforeseen movement of invention. Even the
agriculturist, heretofore the symbol for traditionalism, has had to
supple his mind to new devices.
I need not point out in detail how the old legal and ethical
relations—the whole social structure indeed—of industry have mostly
broken down; how the craftsman has lost control of his tools and is
struggling to regain it through associations; how vast and novel forms
of combination have appeared; how men of all classes are demoralized by
the lack of standards of economic justice; these are familiar matters
which I mention only to show their relation to the principle under
discussion.
In general, modern industry, progressing chiefly in a mechanical sense,
has attained a marvellous organization in that sense; while the social
and moral side of it remains in confusion. We have a promising plant
but have not yet learned how to make it turn out the desired product of
righteousness and happiness.
Wherever there is power which has outstripped the growth of moral
and legal standards there is sure to be some kind of anarchy; and so
it is with our commerce and finance. On these seas piracy flourishes
alongside of honest trade; and, indeed, as in the seventeenth century,
many merchants practise both of these occupations. And the riches thus
gained often go to corrupt the state.
Tn the inferior strata of the commercial order we find that human
nature has been hustled and trodden under foot: “Things are in the
saddle and ride mankind.” The hand-worker, the clerk and the small
tradesman, generally insecure in the tenure of their occupations and
homes, are anxious and restless, while many classes suffer special and
grievous wrongs, such as exhaustion and premature old age, due to the
nervous strain of certain kinds of work, death and mutilation from
machinery, life in squalid tenements, and the debasement of children by
bad surroundings and premature work.
Although the individual, in a merely mechanical sense, is part of
a wider whole than ever before, he has often lost that conscious
membership in the whole upon which his human breadth depends: unless
the larger life is a moral life, he gains nothing in this regard, and
may lose. When children saw the grain growing in the field, watched
the reaping and threshing and grinding of it, and then helped their
mother to make it into bread, their minds had a vital membership in the
economic process; but now that this process, by its very enlargement,
has become invisible, most persons have lost the sense of it.[167] And
this is a type of modern industry at large: the workman, the man of
business, the farmer and the lawyer are contributors to the whole, but
being morally isolated by the very magnitude of the system, the whole
does not commonly live in their thought.
Is it not a universal experience that we cannot do anything with spirit
or satisfaction unless we know what it is for? No one who remembers
the tasks of childhood will doubt this; and it is still my observation
that so soon as I lose a sense of the bearing of what I am doing upon
general aims and the common life, I get stale and discouraged and
need a fresh view. Yet a great part not only of hand labor but of
professional work and business is of this character. The world has
become so complicated that we know not what we do, and thus suffer not
only in our happiness but in our moral steadfastness and religious
faith. There is no remedy short of making life a moral and spiritual as
well as a mechanical whole.
Education is another matter that might be discussed at much length
from this point of view. That radical changes are taking place in it
is hardly more obvious than that these changes are not altogether
beneficent. We may say of this department as of others that there is a
spirit of freedom and vigor abroad, but that its immediate results are
somewhat anarchical.
The underlying reason for the special growth of educational
institutions in our time is the free and conscious character of our
system, which demands a corresponding individual to work it. Thus
democracy requires literacy, that the voter may learn what he is voting
about, and this means schools. Under the plan of free competition
the son need not follow his father’s occupation, but may take the
open sea of life and find whatever work suits him; and this renders
obsolete household instruction in trades. Indeed, our whole life is so
specialized and so subject to change that there is nothing for it but
special schools.
We may probably learn also, as time goes on, that the enlarged sphere
of choice and the complexity of the relations with which it deals call
for a social and moral education more rational and explicit than we
have had in the past. There are urgent problems with which no power
can deal but an instructed and organized public conscience, for the
source of which we must look, in part, to public education.
In striving to meet new requirements our schools have too commonly
extended their system rather than their vital energies; they have
perhaps grown more rapidly in the number of students, the variety of
subjects taught, and in other numerable particulars, than in the inner
and spiritual life, the ideals, the traditions and the _personnel_ of
the teaching force. In this as in other expanding institutions life is
spread out rather thin.
In the country the schools are largely inefficient because of the
falling off in attendance, the poor pay and quality of the teachers,
and the persistence of a system of instruction that lacks vital
relation to country life, tending in fact to discredit it and turn
children toward the towns. In cities the schools are overcrowded—often
insufficient even to contain the children who swarm in the poorer
districts—and the teachers often confused, overworked and stupefied by
routine. Very little, as yet, is done to supply that rational training
for industry which is the urgent need of most children, and which
industry itself no longer furnishes. The discipline, both of pupils
by teachers and of teachers by officials, is commonly of a mechanical
sort, and promising innovations often fail because they are badly
carried out.
Our common schools no doubt compare well enough, on the whole, with
those of the past or of other countries; but when we think of what they
might and should do in the way of bringing order and reason into our
society, and of the life that is going to waste because they do not
nourish and guide it, there is no cause for congratulation.
In our higher education there is a somewhat similar mixture of new
materials, imperfectly integrated, with fragments of a decadent system.
The old classical discipline is plainly going, and perhaps it is best
that it should go, but surely nothing satisfactory has arisen to take
its place.
Among the many things that might be said in this connection I will
touch upon only one consideration, generally overlooked, namely
the value of a _common_ type of culture, corresponding in this
respect to what used to be known as “the education of a gentleman.”
Since the decay of the classical type set in our higher education,
notwithstanding so much that is excellent in it, has had practically
no common content to serve as a medium of communication and spiritual
unity among the educated class. In this connection as in so many others
the question arises whether even an inadequate type of culture is not
better than no type at all.
Not only was the classical tradition the widest and fullest current
of higher thought we had, but it was also a treasury of symbols and
associations tending to build up a common ideal life. Beginning with
Dante all imaginative modern literature appeals to the mind through
classical allusion and reverberation, which, mingling with newer
elements, went to make up a continuing body of higher feeling and idea,
upon which was nourished a continuing fellowship of those competent to
receive and transmit it. All that was best in production came out of it
and was unconsciously disciplined by its standards.
It would indeed be stupid to imagine that any assortment of
specialties can take the place of the culture stream from which all
civilization has been watered: to lose that would be barbarism. And, in
fact, it is a question whether we are not, in some degree and no doubt
temporarily, actually relapsing into a kind of barbarism through the
sudden decay of a culture type imperfectly suited to our use but much
better than none.
If one has an assembly of university graduates before him, what, in the
way of like-mindedness, can he count on their having? Certainly not
Latin, much less Greek; he would be rash indeed to venture a quotation
in these tongues, unless for mystification: nor would allusions to
history or literature be much safer. The truth is that few of the
graduates will have done serious work outside of their specialty; and
the main thing they have in common is a collective spirit animated by
the recollection of foot-ball victories and the like.
I suspect that we may be participating in the rise of a new type of
culture which shall revise rather than abandon the old traditions, and
whose central current will perhaps be a large study of the principles
of human life and of their expression in history, art, philanthropy and
religion. And the belief that the new discipline of sociology (much
clarified and freed from whatever crudeness and pretension may now
impair it) is to have a part in this may not be entirely a matter of
special predilection.
Not very long since a critic, wrote of contemporary art as follows:
“Every one who is acquainted with technical matters in the fine arts
is aware that the _quietly perfect_ art of oil painting is extinct or
nearly so, and that in its place we have a great variety of extremely
clever and dexterous substitutes, resulting in skilful partial
expressions of artistic beauty, but not reaching that calm divine
harmony of aim and method which we find in Titian and Giorgione, and
even in such work as that of Velasquez. The greatest painting of past
times had one quality which no modern one really possesses—it had
_tranquillity_.”[168]
This touches upon something which—as we have already had occasion to
observe—impairs nearly all in the way of higher spiritual achievement
that our time produces—a certain breathlessness and lack of assured
and quiet power. And this is connected with that confusion which does
not permit the unquestioned ascendency of any one type, but keeps the
artist choosing and experimenting, in the effort to make a whole which
tradition does not supply ready-made.
In times of authoritative tradition a type of art grows up by
accretion, rich and pregnant after its kind, which each artist
unconsciously inherits and easily expresses. His forerunners have done
the heavy work, and all that he needs to do is to add the glamour of
personal genius. The grandeur of great literature—like the Bible, or
Homer, or even, though less obviously, Dante, Shakespeare and Goethe—is
largely that of traditional accumulation and concentration. The matter
is old; it has been worked over and over and the unessential squeezed
out, leaving a pregnant remainder which the artist enlivens with
creative imagination. And the same is true of painting and sculpture.
So in architecture: a mediæval cathedral was the culmination of a long
social growth, not greatly dependent upon individual genius. “Not only
is there built into it,” says Mr. Ferguson in his History of Modern
Architecture, “the accumulated thought of all the men who had occupied
themselves with building during the preceding centuries ... but you
have the dream and aspiration of the bishop, who designed it, of all
his clergy, who took an interest in it, of the master-mason, who was
skilled in construction; of the carver, the painter, the glazier, of
the host of men who, each in his own craft, knew all that had been
done before them, and had spent their lives in struggling to surpass
the work of their forefathers.... You may wander in such a building
for weeks or for months together and never know it all. A thought
or a motive peeps out through every joint, and is manifest in every
moulding, and the very stones speak to you with a voice as clear and
as easily understood as the words of the poet or the teaching of the
historian. Hence, in fact, the little interest we can feel in even
the stateliest of modern buildings, and the undying, never satisfied
interest with which we study over and over again those which have been
produced under a different and truer system of art.”[169]
In the same way the Greek architect of the time of Pericles “had
before him a fixed and sacred standard of form.... He had no choice;
his strength was not wasted among various ideals; that which he had
inherited was a religion to him.... Undiverted by side issues as to the
general form of his monument, undisturbed by any of the complicated
conditions of modern life, he was able to concentrate his clear
intellect upon the perfection of his details; his sensitiveness to
harmony of proportion was refined to the last limits: his feeling for
purity of line reached the point of a religion.”[170]
The modern artist may have as much personal ability as the Greek or
the mediæval, but, having no communal tradition to share in his work,
he has to spread his personality out very thin to cover the too broad
task assigned to it, and this thinness becomes the general fault of
contemporary æsthetic production. If he seeks to avoid it by determined
concentration there is apt to be something strained and over-conscious
in the result.
FOOTNOTES:
[167] This illustration is used by Miss Jane Addams.
[168] Philip Gilbert Hamerton, Thoughts about Art, page 99.
[169] Page 24.
[170] Van Brunt, Greek Lines, 95 _ff._
_PART VI_
PUBLIC WILL
CHAPTER XXXIV
THE FUNCTION OF PUBLIC WILL
PUBLIC AND PRIVATE WILL—THE LACK OF PUBLIC WILL—SOCIAL WRONGS COMMONLY
NOT WILLED AT ALL.
What I shall say about Public Will—which is only another phase of the
Democratic Mind—might well have been introduced under Part III; but
I put it here because in a sense it rounds off our whole inquiry,
involving some general conclusions as to the method and possibility of
social betterment.
By public will we may understand the deliberate self-direction of any
social group. There is, of course, nothing mysterious about it, for it
is of the same nature as public opinion, and is simply that so informed
and organized as to be an effective guide to the life of the group. Nor
can we say just when this state is reached—it is a matter of degree—but
we may assume that when a group intelligently pursues a steadfast
policy some measure, at least, of public will has been achieved. Many
savage tribes have it in a small way; the Jews developed it under the
leadership of Moses and Joshua; the mediæval church and the Venetian
aristocracy displayed it. It is capable, like individual will, of
indefinite improvement in insight, stability and scope.
Just as public and private opinion are general and particular phases
of the same thing, so will is a single complex activity with individual
and collective aspects. But there is this difference between public and
private will—just as there is between other individual and collective
phases of mind—that the activity usually appears less conscious when
looked at in its larger aspect than when considered in detail. I
mean that we generally know a great deal better what we are about
as individuals than we do as members of large wholes: when one sits
down to dinner he is conscious of hunger and has a will to appease
it; but if his action has any bearing upon the community, as no doubt
it has, he is unaware of the fact. In the same way the activities of
business have much consciousness and purpose when looked at in detail,
but little when taken collectively. A thousand men buy and sell in
the market, each with a very definite intention regarding his own
transaction, but the market price which results from their bargaining
is an almost mechanical outcome, not a matter of conscious intention
at all. On the other hand, there are conscious wholes in which the
general result may be as clearly purposed as the particular; as when an
intelligent crew is working a vessel, each attending to his own work
but understanding perfectly what the general purpose is and how he is
contributing to it.
So if we restrict the word will to that which shows reflective
consciousness and purpose there is a sense in which a certain choice
(as of the purchaser in the market) may express individual will but
not public will: there is a public side to it, of course, but of an
involuntary sort.
We must remember, also, that although large wholes are, as a rule, much
inferior to individuals in explicit consciousness and purpose, they
are capable of rational structure and action of a somewhat mechanical
sort far transcending that of the individual mind. This is because of
the vast scope and indefinite duration they may have, which enables
them to store up and systematize the work of innumerable persons,
as a nation does, or even an industrial corporation. A large whole
may and usually does display in its activity a kind of rationality
or adaptation of means to ends which, as a whole, was never planned
or purposed by anybody, but is the involuntary result of innumerable
special endeavors. Thus the British colonial empire, which looks like
the result of deliberate and far-sighted policy, is conceded to have
been, for the most part, the unforeseen outcome of personal enterprise.
An institution, as we have seen in previous chapters, is not fully
human, but may, nevertheless, be superhuman, in the sense that it may
express a wisdom beyond the grasp of any one man. And even in a moral
aspect it is by no means safe to assume that the personal is superior
to the collective. This may or may not be the case, depending, among
other things, upon whether there has been a past growth of collective
moral judgment upon the point in question. The civil law, for example,
which is the result of such a growth, is for the most part a much safer
guide regarding property rights than the untrained judgment of any
individual.
But after all public thought and will have the same superiority over
unconscious adaptation (wonderful as the results of that often are)
as private thought and will have over mere instinct and habit. They
represent a higher principle of coördination and adaptation, one
which, properly employed, saves energy and prevents mistakes. The
British may have succeeded on instinct, but probably they would have
succeeded better if more reason had been mixed with it; and the latter
may save them from the decay which has attacked other great empires.
It is quite plain that the social development of the past has been
mostly blind and without human intention. Any page of history will
show that men have been unable to foresee, much less to control, the
larger movements of life. There have been seers, but they have had
only flashes of light, and have almost never been men of immediate
sway. Even great statesmen have lived in the present, feeling their
way, and having commonly no purpose beyond the aggrandizement of their
country or their order. Such partial exceptions as the framing of the
American constitution by the light of history and philosophy, and with
some prevision of its actual working, are confined to recent times and
excite a special wonder.
In particular the democratic movement of modern times has been chiefly
unconscious. As De Tocqueville says of its course in France, “... it
has always advanced without guidance. The heads of the state have made
no preparation for it, and it has advanced without their consent or
without their knowledge. The most powerful, the most intelligent and
the most moral classes of the nation have never attempted ... to guide
it.”[171]
Will has been alive only in details, in the smaller courses of life, in
what each man was doing for himself and his neighbors, while the larger
structure and movement have been subconscious, and for that reason
erratic and wasteful. For it is just as true of large wholes as of
individuals that if they blunder on without knowing what they are doing
much of their energy is lost. No doubt it is better to go ahead even
blindly than to stand still, and remarkable things have been achieved
in this way, but they are little to what might be done if we could
work out our highest human nature intelligently, with assurance and
prevision, and on a large scale. A society which did this would have
the same sort of superiority to present society as man to his sub-human
progenitors.
The very idea of Progress, of orderly improvement on a great scale, is
well known to be of recent origin, or at least recent diffusion, the
prevalent view in the past having been that the actual state of things
was, in its general character, unalterable.[172]
Even at the present day social phenomena of a large sort are for the
most part not willed at all, but are the unforeseen result of diverse
and partial endeavors. It is seldom that any large plan of social
action is intelligently drawn up and followed out. Each interest works
along in a somewhat blind and selfish manner, grasping, fighting and
groping. As regards general ends most of the energy is wasted; and
yet a sort of advance takes place, more like the surging of a throng
than the orderly movement of troops. Who can pretend that the American
people, for instance, are guided by any clear and rational plan in
their economic, political and religious development? They have
glimpses and impulses, but hardly a will, except on a few matters of
near and urgent interest.
In the same way the wrongs that afflict society are seldom willed by
any one or any group, but are by-products of acts of will having other
objects; they are done, as some one has said, rather with the elbows
than the fists. There is surprisingly little ill-intent, and the more
one looks into life the less he finds of that vivid _chiaroscuro_ of
conscious goodness and badness his childish teaching has led him to
expect.
Take, for instance, a conspicuous evil like the sweating system in
the garment trades of New York or London. Here are people, largely
women and children, forced to work twelve, fourteen, sometimes sixteen
hours a day, in the midst of dirt, bad air and contagion, suffering
the destruction of home life and decent nurture; and all for a wage
hardly sufficient to buy the bare necessities of life. But if one
looks for sin dark enough to cast such a shadow he will scarcely find
it. “Neither hath this man sinned nor his parents.” The “sweater”
or immediate employer, to whom he first turns, is commonly himself
a workman, not much raised above the rest and making but little
profit on his transactions. Beyond him is the large dealer, usually
a well-intentioned man, quite willing that things should be better
if they can be made so without too much trouble or pecuniary loss to
himself. He is only doing what others do and what, in his view, the
conditions of trade require. And so on; the closer one gets to the
facts the more evident it is that nowhere is the indubitable wickedness
our feelings have pictured. It is quite the same with political
corruption and the venal alliance between wealth and party management.
The men who control wealthy interests are probably no worse intentioned
than the rest of us; they only do what they think they are forced to
do in order to hold their own; and so with the politician: he finds
that others are selling their power, and easily comes to think of it
as a matter of course. In truth the consciously, flagrantly wicked
man is, and perhaps always has been, a fiction, for the most part, of
denunciation. The psychologist will hardly find him, but will feel
that most sorts of badness are easily enough comprehensible, and will
perhaps agree with the view ascribed to Goethe, that he never heard of
a crime which he might not himself have committed.
Naturally the more mechanical the system is the less of will and of
live human nature there is in its acts. So in Russia, says Tolstoy,
“Some make the laws, others execute them; some train men by discipline
to autocratic obedience; and these last, in their turn, become the
instruments of coercion, and slay their kind without knowing why or to
what end.”[173] In our reading and thinking democracy there is at least
the feeling that the working of the whole _ought_ to be the fulfilment
of some humane purpose, and a continual protest that this is not more
the case.
I cannot hold out a prospect of the early appearance of an adequate
public will; it is a matter of gradual improvement, but it seems
clear that there is a trend this way, based, mechanically, on recent
advances in communication, and, as regards training, on the multiform
disciplines in voluntary coöperation which modern life affords.
FOOTNOTES:
[171] Democracy in America, vol. i, Introduction.
[172] Of course the Greeks had the philosophical conception of general
flux, but I do not know that they applied it to society with such
distinctness as to give anything worth calling an idea of progress.
[173] My Religion, 45.
CHAPTER XXXV
GOVERNMENT AS PUBLIC WILL
GOVERNMENT NOT THE ONLY AGENT OF PUBLIC WILL—THE RELATIVE POINT OF
VIEW; ADVANTAGES OF GOVERNMENT AS AN AGENT—MECHANICAL TENDENCY OF
GOVERNMENT—CHARACTERISTICS FAVORABLE TO GOVERNMENT ACTIVITY—MUNICIPAL
SOCIALISM—SELF-EXPRESSION THE FUNDAMENTAL DEMAND OF THE PEOPLE—ACTUAL
EXTENSION OF STATE FUNCTIONS.
In the growth of public will any agency amenable to public opinion
may serve as an instrument; and this means, of course, any sort of
rational activity, personal as well as institutional. Thus the work of
a secluded scientist, like Pasteur or Edison, taken together with the
general acceptance and application of his results, is as much an act of
public will as the proceedings of a legislature, and often more—because
they may show a more public spirit and a wider knowledge and foresight.
What is necessary is that somewhere there shall be effectual purpose
and endeavor based on a large grasp of the situation. In short,
public will is simply a matter of the more efficient organization
of the general mind: whatever in the way of leadership or mechanism
contributes to the latter has a share in it; and we may naturally
expect it to progress rather by the quickening and coördination of many
agencies than by the aggrandizement of any particular one.[174]
The view which many hold that public will must be chiefly if not wholly
identified with the institution of government is a just one only in a
certain narrow sense. That is to say, the mechanism of government is
indeed the most definite and authoritative expression of public choice,
and if public will is to be limited to what is decided by a count of
voices and carried out, if necessary, by force, then the government
is its only agent. But only a small part of the will of society is
of this sort. In a larger sense it is a diversified whole, embracing
the thought and purpose of all institutions and associations, formal
and informal, that have any breadth of aim, and even, as I have said,
of secluded individuals. Surely the true will of humanity never has
been and is not likely to be concentrated in a single agent, but works
itself out through many instruments, and the unity we need is something
much more intricate and flexible than could be secured through the
state alone. Like other phases of organization, government is merely
one way of doing things, fitted by its character for doing some things
and unfitted for doing others.
As to what these things are, we must, of course, take the relative
point of view and hold that the sphere of government operations is
not, and should not be, fixed, but varies with the social condition at
large. Hard-and-fast theories of what the state may best be and do,
whether restrictive or expansive, we may well regard with distrust. It
is by no means impossible that the whole character of the political
state and of its relation to the rest of life is undergoing change of
an unforeseeable kind which will eventually make our present dogmas on
this point quite obsolete.
The most evident advantage of government as a social instrument—that
which makes it the logical recourse of those who seek a short way to
regeneration—is its power and reach. It is the strongest and most
extensive of our institutions, with elaborate machinery ready to
undertake almost anything, and power limited, in the long run, only by
public opinion.
Moreover, under a democratic system, it is _definitely_ responsible
to the people. Not that it always serves them: we know too well how
apt it is to respect particular rather than general interests: but
there is always a definite means of bringing it into line with public
thought, always reins which the people may grasp if they will. This
has the momentous effect that there is less jealousy of a democratic
government, other things equal, than of any other form of power.
Feeling that it is potentially at least their own, the people will
endure from it with patience abuses that would be intolerable from
any other source. The maddening thing about the oppression of private
monopolies is the personal subjection, the humiliation of being unable
to assert oneself, while in public life the free citizen has always a
way of regular and dignified protest. He appeals not to an alien but to
a larger self.
The most general defect of government is that which goes with its good
qualities. Just because it is the most ancient and elaborate machine
we have, it is apt to be too mechanical, too rigid, too costly and
unhuman. As the most institutional of institutions it has a certain
tendency toward formalism, and is objectionable on grounds of red-tape,
lack of economy and remoteness from the fresher needs of the people.
It is easy, however, for one impressed with this idea to be too
indiscriminate in its application. Much depends upon the kind of
government actually in question, upon the interest the people take in
it, and many other conditions.
In the United States, for instance, each of us lives under three
somewhat distinct kinds of government—federal, state and local—each
of which has a large measure of practical independence of the
others, and may be treated as a separate agent of public will.
Moreover, it is often the case that the larger systems—say the
federal post-office—allow a great deal of local autonomy in their
administration, making it flexible to local opinion.
Under this system, a township, village or small city is no unwieldy
machine, but pretty much what the people see fit to make it, and the
fact that it is a phase of government is no sufficient reason why any
affairs it may choose to undertake may not be as humanly and flexibly
administered as those of a non-political association of equal extent.
They often are so administered, and the same is true of great cities
wherever a vigorous civic consciousness exists and has had time to work
out its instruments. The question is only one of organization, and
this confronts non-political associations as well as political; large
private incorporations having notoriously about the same experience of
formalism, extravagance and malfeasance as the state.
There are certain characteristics whose presence in a given function
is favorable to state activity, though they cannot be said to indicate
clearly where it should begin or end.
One of these, naturally, is the inadequacy or harmfulness of other
agencies. The fact that a work is deemed necessary and that there is
no other adequate way of doing it is the real basis of most state
functions; not only the primary ones of waging war and keeping order,
but of issuing money, building roads, bridges and harbors, collecting
statistics, instituting free schools, controlling monopolies, and so on.
Another is that the work in question should be susceptible of
comparatively simple and uniform methods; since the more various and
intricate a function is, the more difficulty will be found in getting
it properly done by the powerful but usually somewhat clumsy mechanism
of the state. The reasons that may justify a state post or telegraph,
for instance, do not necessarily suffice for the assumption of the far
more complicated business of the railways.
Again, whatever the state undertakes should be something likely to be
watched by public opinion; not necessarily by the whole public, but
at least by some powerful group steadfastly interested in efficiency
and capable of judging whether it is attained. In the United States,
certainly, the successes or failures of government are largely
explicable on this ground. Public education works well, in spite of
a constant leaning toward formalism, because the people take a close
and jealous interest in it, while the monetary and financial functions
are in like manner safeguarded by the scrutiny of the commercial
world. But in the matter of tariffs the scrutiny of the latter,
inadequately balanced by that of any other interest, has produced what
is practically class legislation; and something similar may be said of
many phases of government action.[175]
From such considerations it seems that local government, because it is
on a small scale and because the people will presumably be more able
and willing to watch the details of its operation, should be the sphere
in which extension of functions has the most chance of success. The
more the citizen feels that government is close to him and amenable
to his will, the more, other things equal, he should be inclined to
trust it and to put himself into it. In spite of much disappointing
experience, it seems reasonable to expect that small units, dealing
with the every-day interests of the people, will, in the long run,
enlist an ample share of their capacity and integrity.
And yet the nearness of the whole to the will of the member is
psychical, not spatial, so that if the citizen for some reason feels
closer to the central government and trusts it more, he may be more
willing to aggrandize it. In the United States the people often have
more interest and confidence in the federal system than in their
particular states and cities; one reason being that the constant
enlargement of private organization—as in the case of railways and the
so-called trusts—puts it beyond the power of local control. Of course
there is a natural sphere of development for each of the various phases
of government.
Municipal socialism has the great advantage over other sorts of state
extension of being optional by small units, and of permitting all sorts
of diversity, experiment and comparison. There is nothing in it of
that deadening uniformity and obliteration of alternatives involved in
the blanket socialism of the central state. The evils we suffer from
private monopolies—against which we may always invoke the state if not
other competitors—are as nothing compared with those to be feared from
an all-embracing state-monopoly; and I feel sure that common-sense,
a shrewd attachment to the principle of “checks and balances,” and
the spirit of local individuality will preserve the English-speaking
nations, at least, from serious danger of the latter. In countries like
France, where there is a great traditional preponderance of the central
authority, it may be among the possibilities, though the probable
decline of war—the main cause of mechanical consolidation—should work
in the opposite direction.
There are few things that would be more salutary to the life of our
people than a lively and effective civic consciousness in towns,
villages and rural communities. I trust this is growing and feel no
dread of any socialism which it may prove to involve. One of the
best things I have known Ann Arbor to do was to hold a public-school
carnival on the occasion of the opening of a new high school. There
were all sorts of performances by the children, largely of their own
devising, and the people were interested and brought together as never,
perhaps, before. It was communal, it was _ours_, and the social spirit
it evoked was a common joy. Enterprises of the same nature on a larger
and more permanent scale, such as the recreation centres of Chicago,
are beginning to arise in various parts of the country.
It seems probable that the plain citizen must look largely to the
communal life to supply that chance for self-expression which town
residence and the specialized nature of modern industry have so largely
restricted. Urban life is inevitable, and instead of regretting
the country the city-dwellers had better make the most of the new
situation, through playgrounds, public amusements, socialized schools,
recreation centres, and, in general, a more vital and human civic
organization.[176]
The fundamental need of men is for self-expression, for making their
will felt in whatever they feel to be close to their hearts; and they
will use the state in so far and in such a manner as they find it
helpful in gratifying this need.
The more self-expression, therefore, there is in other spheres of
life, the less need, relatively, people will feel of acting through
government—a principle which should remind those who dread the growth
of the latter that the only sure way to restrict it is by developing
a real, affirmative freedom in other relations. Political democracy
plus social and economic oppression is pretty sure to equal state
socialism, because men will look to political control as a refuge. But
if general conditions are free and open, men will be the more sensible,
by contrast, of the unfree aspects of state activity.
A lack of economy in government will not much check its aggrandizement
if the need of it is strongly felt on other grounds, since human
nature, on the whole, cares very little for economy in comparison with
freedom and justice. One will more willingly pay a water-tax of twenty
dollars to a city government in which he has a voice than of ten to an
alien and overbearing corporation.
In our day there is a tendency toward extension of state functions
which after all is perhaps no more than symmetrical in view of the
general expansion of larger structures in every sphere. It does not
seem to outstrip the growth, for instance, of private corporations, or
labor unions, or of individual wealth. It is easy to see a tendency to
state socialism if you look only at the new functions of the state;
easy to see an opposite tendency if you fix your attention on private
organization. Whether or not the state is _relatively_ increasing its
sphere is not easy to decide. The new conditions of life bring men
closer together, creating a general need of wider organization; and,
so far as now appears, this need is to be met by the simultaneous
development of various structures already well begun; such as
popular government and education, private industrial and commercial
corporations, labor unions, mutual-aid societies, philanthropical
associations, and so on.
The special demand for state extension seems to spring chiefly from
two conditions: the need to control the exorbitant power of private
economic associations, and the need of meeting novel problems arising
from life in great cities. In these and similar directions an
intelligent and practised democracy will proceed tentatively, “with
the firm foot below,” always balancing the loss against the gain.
Experiments in political socialism are sure to be tried, which will
prove instructive and perhaps beneficial. How far they will be carried
no man can say, but I see no special reason to fear that they will go
to any pernicious extreme.
FOOTNOTES:
[174] If the reader is not clear as to what I mean by public will, I
beg to refer him to chapters I, XII and XXXIV.
[175] These principles are much the same as those put forth by W. S.
Jevons. See his Methods of Social Reform, 355.
[176] Compare Simon N. Patten, The New Basis of Civilization, 124.
CHAPTER XXXVI
SOME PHASES OF THE LARGER WILL
GROWING EFFICIENCY OF THE INTELLECTUAL PROCESSES—ORGANIC IDEALISM—THE
LARGER MORALITY—INDIRECT SERVICE—INCREASING SIMPLICITY AND FLEXIBILITY
IN SOCIAL STRUCTURE—PUBLIC WILL SAVES PART OF THE COST OF CHANGE—HUMAN
NATURE THE GUIDING FORCE BEHIND PUBLIC WILL.
The main source of a more effective public will is to be sought not,
peculiarly, in the greater activity of government, but in the growing
efficiency of the intellectual and moral processes as a whole. This
general striving of the public mind toward clearer consciousness is too
evident to escape any observer. In every province of life a multiform
social knowledge is arising and, mingling with the higher impulses of
human nature, is forming a system of rational ideals, which through
leadership and emulation gradually work their way into practice.
Compare, for instance, the place now taken in our universities by
history, economics, political science, sociology and the like with
the attention given them, say, in 1875, when in fact some of these
studies had no place at all. Or consider the multiplication since the
same date of government bureaus—federal, state and local—whose main
function is to collect, arrange and disseminate social knowledge. It
is not too much to say that governments are becoming, more and more,
vast laboratories of social science. Observe, also, the number of books
and periodicals seriously devoted to these subjects. No doubt much
of this work is feverish and shallow—as must be expected in a time of
change—but there is, on the whole, nothing more certain or more hopeful
than the advance in the larger self-knowledge of mankind.
One result of this clearer consciousness is that idealism is coming
to be organic; that is to say each particular ideal is coming to be
formed and pursued in subordination to a system of ideals based on
a large perception of fact. While putting a special enthusiasm into
his own work, the idealist is learning that he needs to have also a
general understanding of every good work, and of the whole to which all
contribute. For him to imagine that his is the only work worth doing is
as unfortunate as for the captain of a company to imagine that he is
conducting the whole campaign. Other things equal, the most effective
idealists are those who are most sane, and who have a sense for the
complication, interdependence and inertia of human conditions.
A study of the ideals and programmes that have had most acceptance
even in recent years would make it apparent that our state of mind
regarding society has been much like that which prevailed regarding the
natural world when men sought the philosopher’s stone and the fountain
of perpetual youth. Much energy has been wasted, or nearly wasted, in
the exclusive and intolerant advocacy of special schemes—single tax,
prohibition, state socialism and the like—each of which was imagined
by its adherents to be the key to millennial conditions. Every year,
however, makes converts to the truth that no isolated scheme can be a
good scheme, and that real progress must be an advance all along the
line. Those who see only one thing can never see that truly, and so
must work, even at that, in a somewhat superficial and erratic manner.
For similar reasons our moral schemes and standards must grow larger
and more commensurate with the life which they aim to regulate.[177]
The higher will can never work out unless it is as intelligently
conceived and organized as commerce and politics. Evidently if we do
not see how life really goes and what good and ill are under actual
conditions, we can neither inculcate nor follow the better courses.
There is nothing for it but to learn to feel and to effectuate kinds
of right involving a sense of wider and remoter results than men have
been used to take into account. As fast as science enables us to
trace the outcome of a given sort of action we must go on to create a
corresponding sense of responsibility for that outcome.
The popular systems of ethics are wholly inadequate, and all thinking
persons are coming to see that those traits of decency in the obvious
relations of life that we have been accustomed to regard as morality
are in great part of secondary importance. Many of them are of somewhat
the same character as John Woolman’s refusal to wear dyed hats—we
wonder that people do not see something more important to exercise
their consciences upon. When the larger movements of life were
subconscious and the good and ill flowing from them were ascribed to
an inscrutable providence, morality could not be concerned with them;
but the more we understand them the more they must appear the chief
field for its activity.
We still have to do with obvious wrong—the drunkard, the housebreaker,
the murderer, and the like—but these simple offences are easy to deal
with, comparatively, as being evident and indubitable, so that all
normal people condemn them. No great ability or organization upholds
them; they are like the outbreaks of savages or children in that they
do not constitute a formidable menace to society. And, moreover, we are
coming to see that they are most effectually dealt with by indirect and
preventive methods.
The more dangerous immorality is, of course, that which makes use of
the latest engines of politics or commerce to injure the community.
Wrong-doers of this kind are usually decent and kindly in daily
walk and conversation, as well as supporters of the church and
other respectable institutions. For the most part they are not even
hypocrites, but men of a dead and conventional virtue, not awake to the
real meaning of what they are and do. A larger morality requires that
they should be waked up, that a public conscience, based on knowledge,
should judge things by their true results, and should know how to make
its judgments effectual.
Moreover, this is not a matter merely of the bad men whom we read about
in the newspapers, but one of personal guilt in all of us. It is my
observation that the same wrongs which are held up to execration in
the magazines are present, under appropriate forms, among teachers,
lawyers, ministers, reputable tradesmen, and others who come under
my immediate notice. We are all in it: the narrow principles are much
the same, the differences being largely in the scale of operations, in
being or not being found out, in more or less timidity in taking risks,
and so on.
A somewhat similar problem is that of energizing indirect service. The
groups we serve—the nation, the educational institution, the oppressed
class, for instance—have come to be so vast, and often so remote from
the eye, that even the ingenuity of the newspaper and magazine press
can hardly make them alive for us and draw our hearts and our money in
their direction. The “we” does not live in face-to-face contact, and
though photo-engravings and stereopticons and exhibitions and vivid
writing are a marvelous substitute, they are often inadequate, so that
we do not feel the cogency of the common interest so immediately as
did the men of the clans. “Civilization,” says Professor Simon Patten,
“spares us more and more the sight of anguish, and our imaginations
must be correspondingly sharpened to see in the check-book an agent
as spiritual and poetic as the grime and blood-stain of ministering
hands.”[178] How far this may come to pass it is hard to say: for
myself, I do not find it easy to write checks for objects that are not
made real to me by some sort of personal contact. No doubt, however,
our growing system of voluntary institutions—churches, philanthropic
societies, fraternal orders, labor unions and the like—are training us
in the habit of expressing ourselves through the check-book and other
indirect agents.
I expect, however, that the best results will flow not merely from
an intelligent general benevolence that writes checks for all sorts
of good causes, but from a kind of specialization in well-doing, that
will enable one by familiarity to see through the tangle of relations
at a particular point and act in the view of truth. In philanthropy,
for instance, an increasing number of men and women of wealth and
ability will devote not only their checks but trained thought and
personal exertion to some particular sort of work which takes hold of
their interest—to the welfare of dependent children, of the blind, and
so on—making this their business, giving it the same close and eager
attention they would any other business, and so coming to understand
it through and through. These, along with salaried workers, will be
the leaders in each special line, and will draw after them the less
personal support of those who have confidence in them; but people
will never send much of their treasure where their heart does not go
first. Every city and neighborhood has its urgent social needs which
the resident may study and devote himself to with much better results
to the world and to his own character than if he limits himself to
the writing of checks. And for that matter every occupation—as law,
medicine, teaching and the various sorts of business and hand-labor—has
its own philanthropies and reforms into which one may put all the
devotion he is capable of. If each of us chooses some disinterested
form of public service and puts himself thoroughly into it, things will
go very well.
Another tendency involved in the rise of public will is that toward a
greater simplicity and flexibility of structure in every province of
life: principles are taking the place of formulas.
In the early history of a science the body of knowledge consists of a
mass of ill-understood and ill-related observations, speculations and
fancies, which the disciple takes on the authority of the master: but
as principles are discovered this incoherent structure falls to pieces,
and is replaced by a course of study based on experiment and inference.
So in the early growth of every institution the truth that it embodies
is not perceived or expressed in simplicity, but obscurely incarnated
in custom and formula. The perception of principles does not do away
with the mechanism, but tends to make it simple, flexible, human,
definitely serving a conscious purpose and quick to stand or fall
according to its success. Under the old system everything is preserved,
because men do not know just where the virtue resides; under the new
the essential is kept and the rest thrown away.
Or we may say that the change is like the substitution of an alphabet
for picture writing, with the result that language becomes at the
same time more complex in its structure and simpler in its elements.
When once it is discovered that all speech may be reduced to a few
elementary sounds the symbols of these, being sufficient to express all
possible words, are more efficient and less cumbersome than the many
characters that were used before.
The method of this change is that struggle for existence among ideas
which is implied in the wide and free intercourse of modern life. In
this only the vital, human and indispensable can survive, and truth
is ever casting off superfluity and working itself down to first
principles. We have remarked this in the case of religion, and it
would be easy to find the same process at work in other traditions.
The modern world, then, in spite of its complexity, may become
fundamentally simpler, more consistent and reasonable. Apparently
formalism can never more be an accepted and justified condition, any
more than reason can be exchanged for the blind instinct of the lower
animals. It will exist wherever thought and feeling are inadequate to
create a will—as is much the case at present—but people will not be
content with it as in the past. There will be creeds, but they will
affirm no more than is really helpful to believe, ritual, but only what
is beautiful or edifying; everything must justify itself by function.
Public will, like individual will, has the purpose of effecting an
adaptation to conditions that is rational and economical instead of
haphazard and wasteful. In general it should greatly diminish, though
it can hardly obviate, the cost of social change. In commerce, for
instance, it has already rendered crises less sudden and destructive—in
spite of the enormous scale of modern transactions—and the time should
not be very far away when trouble of this sort will be so foreseen and
discounted and so provided against by various sorts of insurance as
to do but little damage. In the same way the vast problem of poverty,
and of the degeneracy that springs from it, can be met and in great
part conquered by a long-sighted philanthropy and education. In
religion there is apparently no more need of that calamitous overthrow
of the foundations of belief from which many suffered in the passing
generation. In the state violent revolution seems likely to disappear
as fast as democracy is organized; while in international relations
it will be strange if we do not see a rapid diminution of war. In all
these matters, and in many others, social costs are capable of being
foreseen and provided against by rational measures expressing an
enlightened public will.
The guiding force back of public will, now as ever, is of course human
nature itself in its more enduring characteristics, those which find
expression in primary groups and are little affected by institutional
changes. This nature, familiar yet inscrutable, is apparently in a
position to work itself out more adequately than at any time in the
past.
FOOTNOTES:
[177] This line of thought is developed by Professor E. A. Ross in his
book, Sin and Society.
[178] The New Basis of Civilization, 61.
INDEX
Abbott, Lyman, 187.
Achilles, 110.
Addams, Jane, 25, 137, 190, 191, 244, 350, 385.
Agreement, not essential to public opinion, 122.
Alphabet, 417.
Amenomori, 331.
Anarchism, 196;
in the church, 374.
Anarchy and spoliation, fear of, 276.
Anderson, W. L., 83.
Ann Arbor, school carnival in, 408.
Architecture, as communication, 79, 172;
disorganization in, 390 ff.
Aristocracy, hereditary, 210, 257, 282 f.
Army, German, 324;
American, 325.
Art, visible society a work of, 21;
collective judgments on, 125;
in relation to democracy, 157 ff.;
spirit of, 244 f., 321;
disorganization in, 390 ff.
Arts, non-verbal, as communication, 77 ff.
Assemblage, public, 109.
Athletic sports, 163, 199.
Attenuation of sentiment, 178.
Augustine, 374.
Austen, Jane, 102.
Autocratic control of industry, 262 ff.
Average-theory of group action, 123 ff.
Bacon, Francis, 76, 318.
Bagehot, W., 178.
Baring-Gould, 325.
Biological type, the, 315 f.
Birth-rate, decline of, 358 ff.
Blame, 15 ff., 201 ff.
Bourget, Paul, 160, 171.
Brooks, John G., 45.
Brotherhood, sentiment of, 189 ff.
Browne, Sir T., 70, 153.
Brownell, W. C., 161, 166, 321, 332 ff.
Bryce, James, 85, 136, 182, 276, 280, 369, 381.
Buck, Winifred, 43.
Burckhardt, 354.
Burke, 330.
Burne-Jones, 168.
Burroughs, John, 93.
Camp-fire, Assembly around, 109 f.
Carlyle, 167, 323.
Carnegie, A., views of on wealth, 281.
Capitalist class, ascendency of, 256 ff.
Caste, 209 ff.
Change, social, in relation to caste, 217, 225, 231.
Check-book, in social reform, 415 f.
Chicago, 212;
recreation centres in, 408.
Child, the, his relation to the world, 315 ff.
Children, development of social consciousness in, 7 ff., 72;
reforms in the interest of, 318 f.;
“spoiled,” 358 ff.
China, lack of communication in, 86.
Chinese, 186, 198.
Chivalry, 224.
Choice, excessive, 172;
versus mechanism, 323;
spirit of, 359 ff., 365 ff.
Christianity, 52, 73, 136, 166, 203 ff., 253, 304, 373 ff.
Church, the, 204, 322, 342, 347, 370;
disorganization in, 372 ff.
City life, 94, 178 f., 409.
Class animosity, 301 ff.
Class atmosphere, 272.
Class-consciousness, 240 ff., 275, 284 ff., 305.
Class struggle, the, 241, 277, 286.
Classes, social, 179 f., 209-309;
open, 239 ff.;
open, in relation to wealth, 248 ff.;
capitalist, 256 ff.;
organization of the ill-paid, 284 ff.;
hostile feeling between, 301.
Classical culture, 388 f.
Clergymen, facial expression of, 67.
Commercialism, 167;
in relation to art, 173 f., 261, 346, 383 ff.
Commons, J. R., 286.
Communication, 54;
significance of, 61 ff.;
growth of, 66 ff.;
modern, a cause of enlargement and animation, 80 ff.;
modern, in relation to individuality, 91 ff.;
in relation to superficiality and strain, 98 ff.;
in relation to crowds, 151, 180, 191;
in relation to caste, 226 f., 338 f.
Community ideal, the, 33 ff., 52, 305.
See also We-feeling and Moral unity.
Compensation, principle of, in social organization, 55 ff., 115, 118.
Competition, 35, 56, 158, 199 ff., 210, 226 f., 235, 239 f., 244, 323.
See also Survival of the fittest.
Comte, 237.
Conflict. See Competition.
Confusion, in relation to art and literature, 162 ff.;
to sentiment, 193.
See also Disorganization.
Conquest, a cause of caste, 221.
Conscience, public, 387.
Consciousness, growth of in history, 107 ff.
Consciousness, public, 10 ff., 82, 411 ff.
Consciousness, social, 4 ff.;
development of in children, 7 ff., 71, 350.
Conservatism, 327 ff.
Constitution of the United States, 314, 398.
Convention and tradition, 335 ff.
Conventionalism, 339 ff.
Cornish, F. W., 224.
Cost of change, 418 f.
Country life, effects of, 93 f., 178 f.
Courage, 187.
Creeds, 375 ff., 418.
Crime, 202 f.
Crises, commercial, 418.
Crowd excitement, in relation to democracy, 149 ff.
Crowds, psychology of, 149 ff.
Cuba, 322.
Culture groups and types, 163 ff., 243, 388 f.
Dante, 36, 70, 165, 173, 190, 388.
Darwin, 29, 67, 189, 295, 321.
Dead-level theory, 93, 159 ff.
Declaration of Independence, 48, 134.
Dellenbaugh, F. S., 108.
Demand, economic, often degrading, 141.
Democracy, among children, 45;
source of its ideals, 51;
dependent upon printing, 75;
relation to modern communication, 85 ff.;
an inadequate name, 86;
as mental organization, 105-205;
a discipline in self-control, 152;
and distinction, 157 ff.;
in relation to wealth, 278 ff.;
to childhood, 318, 329, 334, 398.
Descartes, 5 ff.
Determinism, moral value of, 19 f.
De Tocqueville, Alexis, 27, 92, 99, 101, 116, 159, 172, 175, 235,
329, 398.
Devine, E. T., 297.
Dialects, revival of, 96.
Diffusion, a result of modern communication, 81;
possibilities of, 87;
not opposed to selection, 88;
zeal for, 174;
the age of, 175.
Dill, Samuel, 114.
Discussion. See Opinion.
Disorganization, spiritual, 162 ff., 347 ff.;
in the family, 356 ff.;
in the church, 372 ff.;
in industry, 383 ff.;
in education and culture, 386 ff.;
in fine art, 389 ff.
Distinction, apt to cause isolation, 138 f.;
in relation to democracy 157 ff.
Divorce, 365 ff.
Domestic service, 367.
Donovan, J., 109.
Dorsey, J. O., 111.
Dress, 305.
Drink, 293 f.
Economic Interpretation of History, 255.
Economic system, confusion in, 383.
Education, 48, 87, 117, 227, 234;
formalism in, 345 f., 349;
of women, 363 ff.;
disorganization in, 386 ff.;
public, 406.
Efficiency, social, depends upon freedom, 234 f.
Ellis, H., 364.
Emerson, 125, 167, 176, 246, 342, 385.
Emulation, 307.
Energy, persistence of, 328.
England, 274, 281, 301, 302, 340, 358, 397 f.
Ennui, 99.
Environment, 214 f., 230, 291 ff., 316 f.
Equality, 180, 257, 301 f.
Ethics. See Morality.
Eugenics, 296.
Facial Expression, 66 f.
Family, 10 f.;
as a primary group, 24;
as a source of primary ideals, 24, 48, 52;
traditional careers in, 236 f.;
disorganization in, 356 ff.
Fashion, 336 ff.
Fellowship, 174 f., 242 ff.
Ferguson, on architecture, 391.
Feudal system, 223 ff.
Formalism, 56, 198, 342 ff., 376 ff., 418.
Fort Sumter, attack on, 154.
France, 155, 166, 275, 330, 331 ff., 398, 408.
Frederick the Great, 86.
Freedom, as a primary ideal, 46;
two aspects of in relation to classes, 245 f., 275, 325.
Free-will, 20.
Galton, Francis, 214, 317.
“Gangs” of boys, as primary groups, 49.
Garibaldi, 325.
Genius, 348.
Germany, 27, 248, 306, 324.
Gesture, 66, 69.
Gibbon, Edward, 73, 77.
God, 188, 196, 203, 205, 352, 353, 354, 372, 373, 380.
Goethe, 78, 165, 367, 401.
Gossip, organized, 84 f.
Government, as public will, 402 ff.;
sphere of, 403 ff.;
transformation of, 411.
Greece, refinement in, 180.
Greed of gain, 36, 254.
Green, J. R., 108.
Groups, primary, 23 ff.
See also Types, Classes and Institutions.
Gummere, F. B., 107, 222.
Hamerton, P. G., 140, 356, 390.
Hartt, R. L., 94.
Haste, 170 ff.
Heine, 95.
Herbert, Geo., 287.
Heredity and environment, 294 f., 316.
Higginson, T. W., 127, 136, 282.
History, organic view of, 255.
Holbein, 67.
Honesty and policy, 184.
Hopefulness, 187.
Horace (Q. Horatius Flaccus), 110.
Hostile feeling, 199 ff., 301 ff.
House of Commons, 341.
Howard, Geo. E., 24.
Howells, W. D., 271.
Human nature, relation to primary groups, 28 ff.;
dependent upon communication, 62 f., 419.
Humanism of sentiment, 178, 180 ff.
Huxley, 190.
Idealism, Organic, 412 f.
Ideals, primary, 32 ff., 51 ff., 113;
of groups, 126 f., 165 f.
Imitation, two kinds of, 336.
Immigrants, 294, 295.
Immigration, 169, 220 f., 369.
India, caste in, 224.
Indians, American, kindness among, 41;
individuality among, 110 f.
Individual, in relation to institutions, 313 ff.
Individualism, in art, 166, 243, 347 ff.;
domestic, 357 ff.
See also Disorganization.
Individuality, how affected by modern communication, 91 ff.;
in tribal life, 110;
development of in history, 112, 116 ff.;
in relation to democracy, 160 ff.;
moral, 201 f.;
enjoyment of, 307;
in harness, 324, 332 ff.
Inheritance principle, 209 ff.
Institutions, in relation to privileged classes, 140 f., 186, 313-392;
and the individual, 313 ff.
Intolerance, 344.
Introspection, sympathetic, 7.
Italy, 167, 185, 186, 347, 348.
James, Henry, 84, 171, 174.
James, William, 20, 138, 253.
Japan, 328, 330.
Jesus, 16, 203 ff., 377.
Jevons, W. S., 407.
Johnson, Doctor, 93.
Johnson, Samuel (the orientalist), 225.
Justice, sentiment of, 181.
Keller, Helen, 62 f.
Kempis, Thomas à, 137, 138.
Kindness, 40 ff., 189 ff.
Kropotkin, P. A., 41, 189.
Labor Movement, 196, 242, 243, 258, 275, 284 ff.
Labor troubles, 308.
Lamb, Charles, 88.
Latin language, 74.
Law students, 141.
Lawfulness as a primary ideal, 42 ff.
Lawyers, 269.
Leadership, 135 f., 402.
LeBon, G., 149, 153.
Lecky, W. H. H., 96, 144.
Lee, H. C., 75.
Lee, Joseph, 34, 43.
Lincoln, 76.
Lindsey, Judge, 39.
Literature, in relation to democracy, 157 ff.;
growth of refinement in, 179;
disorganization in, 390;
of social knowledge, 411 f.
Lloyd, A. H., 319.
Lloyd, H. D., 140, 263, 264.
Longinus, 115.
Lowell, J. R., 101, 378.
Loyalty, 38 f., 182.
Luther, 75.
Luxury, 306, 359.
Macaulay, on democracy, 143 f.
Macchiavelli, 184.
Mackenzie, J. S., 92.
Maladjustment, as a cause of poverty, 293 f.
Malthus, 295.
Manners, tendency of, 197 ff.
Mantegna, 320.
Manual training, 304.
Marriage, 282, 356 ff.
See also Family.
Masses, in relation to public opinion, 135 ff.
Middle ages, caste in, 222 ff., 267.
Might and right, 320.
Milton, 76.
Mind, organic view of, 3 ff.;
democratic, 107-207.
Mind-cure doctrines, 297.
Mir, Russian, 26.
Mob. See Crowd.
Money-value, nature of, 265 f.
Montesquieu, 86, 116, 142, 261, 302.
Moral aspect, of the organic view of mind, 13 ff.;
of institutions, 322;
of public will, 397.
Moral principles, need of settled, 200 f., 307.
Moral unity, 33, 133, 182, 385.
Morality, of group action, 124;
specialization in, 130;
mode of progress in, 131;
of capitalists, 259 f.;
international, 322;
the larger, 413 ff.
Music as communication, 77, 79.
Napoleon, 184.
Nationality, persistence of, 96.
Natural Right, doctrine of, relation to primary ideals, 47 f.
Natural selection, 189, 294 ff.
Nature and nurture, 214.
Negro question, 218 ff.
Negroes, 295.
Neighborhood, the, 24 ff., 49.
Newspaper, in modern communication, 83 ff., 151, 192 f., 270 f., 346.
North Carolina, mountain people of, 94.
O’Brien, R. L., 346.
Omahas, war party among, 110 f.
Opinion, public, 10 f., 85, 108, 121 ff., 144 f., 307 f., 406.
See also Democracy.
Opportunity, freedom of, 233 ff., 245 f., 257 f.
Opposition, morality of, 37.
See also Competition.
Organic conception of society, 3 ff., 13 ff., 255.
See also table of contents.
Organic idealism, 412 f.
Organization, social, 3, 21, 22.
See also table of contents.
Organizing capacity, 266.
Originality of masses, 135.
Ostrogorski, 99.
Painting, 77 ff., 179, 389 f.
Paralysis, general, 103.
Pater, Walter, 14, 79.
Patten, Simon N., 299, 409, 415.
Paul, St., on truth, 182.
Personality, relation of to social organization, 53;
to specialization, 130 f.;
interest in at elections, 143; 161, 214 f.
See also Individuality.
Persons, judgment of by the masses, 142 ff.
Philanthropy, 48, 195, 299, 355, 416.
Plato, 86, 125, 159.
Play-group, the, 24 ff., 34 ff.
Politics, rule of public opinion in, 132 ff.
Portraits, old and new, 101 f.
Poverty, 290 ff., 418.
Power, the deepest of instincts, 251;
social nature of, 264 ff.
Prestige of wealth, 271 f.
Prigs, lack of in France, 333.
Primary groups, 23 ff.
Primary ideals, 32 ff.
See also Ideals.
Principles, supplanting formulas, 417.
Printing, the basis of democracy, 71 ff.
Privilege, apt to cause isolation, 138.
Professional classes, 269 f.
Progress, irregularity of, 114;
a modern idea, 399;
cost of, 418.
Public opinion. See Opinion, public.
Punishment, 15 ff., 202 f.
Race Question, 218 ff.
Race-capacity, 28 f., 44 f.
Realism, 183 ff.
Refinement, tendency toward, 179 f.
Religion, 372 ff.
See also Christianity.
Renaissance, 179, 348.
Resentment, 202 f.
Responsibility, 18 ff.
Roberts, Lord, 348.
Rodin, 321.
Roman Empire, 114 f., 349.
Roscommon, Earl of, 153.
Ross, E. A., on the mob-mind, 149;
on the larger morality, 413.
Rules of the game, 43 ff., 200, 307.
Ruskin, 167.
Russia, 183.
Sargent, 101.
Schiller, 266.
Sculpture, 77, 339.
Sedgwick, H. D., 101 f.
Self-consciousness, inseparable from social consciousness, 5 ff.
Self-expression, the fundamental need, 304, 409.
Self-words, a study of the early use of, 8.
Sentiment, how affected by communication, 88;
individuality of, 97;
leadership in by the masses, 135 ff., 142 ff.;
meaning and trend of, 177 ff.;
religious, 372, 379.
Service, as a primary ideal, 39;
spirit of, 196, 260 f.;
ideal of, 302 f.;
indirect, 415 f.
Sexes, differentiation of, 364 f.
Sighele, 149.
Sill, E. W., 97.
Smiles, Samuel, 246.
Smith, A. H., 198.
Social consciousness. See Consciousness.
Social salvation, 380.
Social structure, increasing simplicity and flexibility of, 416 f.
Socialism, 51, 196, 276 ff., 285, 308;
municipal, 407 ff.;
state, 409 ff., 412.
Sociology, 197, 389, 411.
Solidarity, of classes, 276 f.;
of nations, 330 ff.
Spahr, Charles, 309.
Spain, class feeling in, 301.
Specialization, of opinion, 126 ff.;
not opposed to democracy, 147 f.;
in philanthropy, 416.
Speech, origin and growth of, 68;
mental and social functions of, 69 ff., 109, 417.
Spencer, Herbert, 92.
Spencer and Gillen, 29, 41.
Spinoza, 19, 20.
Strain, 98 ff., 170 ff.
Strike, general, 277.
Struggle for existence, among ideas, 417.
See also Competition, Class struggle, Survival of the fittest.
Students, university, 274.
Sturgis, Russell, 174.
Suffrage, popular, 146.
Suggestion, 150 ff., 328.
Suicide, 103.
Sullivan, Miss, Helen Keller’s teacher, 62 f.
Superficiality, 98 ff., 117, 170 ff.
Survival of the fittest, 189, 258, 294 ff.
See also Competition.
Sweating system, 400 f.
Symbols, religious, 373 ff.
Symonds, J. A., 375.
Sympathy, as the basis of reform, 14 f.
Tarde, Gabriel, 327, 329, 336.
Tariff, 406.
Telegraph, effect of on language, 346.
Tennyson, 167.
Thackeray, 361.
Thoreau, 34, 164 f., 176, 195, 249, 253.
Tolstoi, 167, 401.
Tout, T. F., 223.
Tradition and convention, 335 ff.
Traditionalism, 339 ff.
Tranquillity, lack of in art, 390.
Transition, distinguished from democracy, 158 f.
Truth, as a primary ideal, 39;
sentiment of, 182 ff.
Types, social, 22, 163, 340.
Unconscious Social Relations, 4, 112.
Unfit, are the poor the?, 295 f.
Uniformity of American life, 166 f.
Unions. See Labor movement.
University of Michigan, supported by popular suffrage, 145.
Van Brunt, Henry, 172, 391.
Variation of ideas, 343.
Veblen, T. V., 119.
Vulgarity of wealth and privilege, 139 f.
Watts’ Mammon, 346.
Wealth, 136;
inheritance of, 229, 236;
as the basis of open classes, 248 ff.;
comparative ascendency of, 278 f.;
prestige of, 303 f.;
use of, 304 f.
We-feeling, 23, 31, 33 ff., 189 ff., 298, 333, 351, 415.
Westermarck, Edward, 24, 40 f.
Wharton, Edith, 102.
Whately, 150.
Whitman, 176, 195 f., 303.
Will, public, 395-419;
government as, 402 ff.;
some phases of, 411 ff.
See also Opinion, public.
Winckelmann, 78.
Women, opening of new careers to, 362 ff.
Woods, Robert, 43, 49.
Woolman, John, 413.
Wordsworth, 165, 317.
Worry, a cause of poverty, 297.
Writing, social function of, 72 ff.
Wrongs, social, not willed, 400 f.
Young Men, in relation to classes, 223, 273 f., 327.
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOCIAL ORGANIZATION ***
Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will
be renamed.
Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright
law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works,
so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United
States without permission and without paying copyright
royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part
of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™
concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark,
and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following
the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use
of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for
copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very
easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation
of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project
Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away—you may
do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected
by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark
license, especially commercial redistribution.
START: FULL LICENSE
THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the free
distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project
Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full
Project Gutenberg™ License available with this file or online at
www.gutenberg.org/license.
Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg™
electronic works
1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg™
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or
destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in your
possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a
Project Gutenberg™ electronic work and you do not agree to be bound
by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person
or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be
used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works if you follow the terms of this
agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg™
electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.
1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the
Foundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection
of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works. Nearly all the individual
works in the collection are in the public domain in the United
States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the
United States and you are located in the United States, we do not
claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing,
displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as
all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope
that you will support the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting
free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg™
works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the
Project Gutenberg™ name associated with the work. You can easily
comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the
same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg™ License when
you share it without charge with others.
1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are
in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States,
check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this
agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing,
distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any
other Project Gutenberg™ work. The Foundation makes no
representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any
country other than the United States.
1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other
immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg™ License must appear
prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg™ work (any work
on which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the
phrase “Project Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed,
performed, viewed, copied or distributed:
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you
are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws
of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is
derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not
contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the
copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in
the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are
redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase “Project
Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply
either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or
obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg™
trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is posted
with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any
additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms
will be linked to the Project Gutenberg™ License for all works
posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the
beginning of this work.
1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg™
License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg™.
1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
Gutenberg™ License.
1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including
any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access
to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg™ work in a format
other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official
version posted on the official Project Gutenberg™ website
(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense
to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means
of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original “Plain
Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format must include the
full Project Gutenberg™ License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg™ works
unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
access to or distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
provided that:
• You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
the use of Project Gutenberg™ works calculated using the method
you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed
to the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark, but he has
agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid
within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are
legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty
payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in
Section 4, “Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation.”
• You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™
License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all
copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue
all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg™
works.
• You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of
any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of
receipt of the work.
• You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works.
1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project
Gutenberg™ electronic work or group of works on different terms than
are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing
from the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of
the Project Gutenberg™ trademark. Contact the Foundation as set
forth in Section 3 below.
1.F.
1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project
Gutenberg™ collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg™
electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may
contain “Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate
or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or
other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or
cannot be read by your equipment.
1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Right
of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
Gutenberg™ trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
Gutenberg™ electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGE.
1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium
with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you
with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in
lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person
or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second
opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If
the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing
without further opportunities to fix the problem.
1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’, WITH NO
OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT
LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of
damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement
violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the
agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or
limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or
unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the
remaining provisions.
1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
providing copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in
accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the
production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg™
electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses,
including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of
the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this
or any Project Gutenberg™ work, (b) alteration, modification, or
additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg™ work, and (c) any
Defect you cause.
Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg™
Project Gutenberg™ is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of
computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It
exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations
from people in all walks of life.
Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg™’s
goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg™ collection will
remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
and permanent future for Project Gutenberg™ and future
generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see
Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org.
Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit
501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
Revenue Service. The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identification
number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by
U.S. federal laws and your state’s laws.
The Foundation’s business office is located at 809 North 1500 West,
Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up
to date contact information can be found at the Foundation’s website
and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact
Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation
Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without widespread
public support and donations to carry out its mission of
increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widest
array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
status with the IRS.
The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND
DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular state
visit www.gutenberg.org/donate.
While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
approach us with offers to donate.
International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation
methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To
donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate.
Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project
Gutenberg™ concept of a library of electronic works that could be
freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and
distributed Project Gutenberg™ eBooks with only a loose network of
volunteer support.
Project Gutenberg™ eBooks are often created from several printed
editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in
the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not
necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper
edition.
Most people start at our website which has the main PG search
facility: www.gutenberg.org.
This website includes information about Project Gutenberg™,
including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
